The Chosen and the Beloved
by GuiltyAdonis
Summary: In which Booker DeWitt comes to the city of Columbia in an attempt to clear his name, only to find that his past is inextricably tied to that of the city, and that fate has a way of sneaking up at the worst possible times. Or, an AU rewrite in which questions are answered, underused characters are given their due, and the Lutece twins can't help snarking at everything Booker says.
1. From Sodom Shall I Lead Thee

_AN: Hey everybody! First off, I apologize for what is going to be a massive textwall here. You don't have to read this, but I'd recommend you do, since, well, it'll aid your understanding of my intentions at the very least, and at best maybe make you want to read the story a little more!_

_Now then. It's important to note the circumstances under which I first played this game. I had been seeing promotional materials, screenshots, and gameplay trailers on tumblr for weeks, and as soon as the main characters became known to me, I realized I shipped them with the burning of a thousand suns. I didn't know their names, or anything about them— just that Victorian Girl and Hardboiled Detective Guy were really fucking cute together._  
_I made this known, until someone who had finished the game already came into my askbox and requested that I not post so much shipping stuff, because he was her father and it was making them uncomfortable._  
_This was the only spoiler regarding the end that I received. I did not know the circumstances by which this came to light in-game; I had no idea about the whole Double Quantum Reacharound with Comstock and Anna and blah blahblah. So, with this in mind, I played the game._  
_This story is the novelization of what I thought was Bioshock Infinite. For the most part, especially in the beginning, it will read like a direct transcription of the game. A lot of things will remain exactly the same._  
_Many things will be glaringly different. If you're willing to stick around until then, I'd like to think this will be a satisfying fix-it for what could have been a really brilliant story and turned into a massive disappointment._

_Also, I refuse to give Irrational the satisfaction and stop shipping Booker with Elizabeth. I thoroughly intend to fix their relationship so that it isn't squicky, but that happens at the end of the story. The relationship, on the other hand, happens a good deal sooner. It's supposed to be awkward and gross to the audience; that's what we in the business like to call 'dramatic irony'. But nevertheless, you have been warned._

_With that said, I hope you'll decide to hang around, and I really hope you'll enjoy the story!_

_And, last but not least, I'd be nothing without my enthusiastic and extraordinarily talented beta **proserpinasacra**, who does not have an account here but who you can find on ao3 (or on tumblr as themusicalbaconangel)._

* * *

"_In every man sleeps a prophet,_  
_and when he wakes,_  
_there is a little more evil in the world."_  
—Emil Cioran

**CHAPTER ONE: ** From Sodom Shall I Lead Thee.

JUNE 29, 1912

Booker had known he should never have taken this job from the moment he'd first seen the portrait.

Of course, complications had been likely right from the start, and he'd been well aware that things would almost certainly go south from the moment Samuels knocked on his door. He'd gotten in deep with some less-than-savory people— not for the first time, and doubtless not for the last— and it had been Samuels that had pulled his ass out of the fire. Booker had never held any misconceptions that the man was doing this out of the goodness of his heart; Samuels was a scumbag through and through, but he had influence where it counted.

Influence, and ulterior motives.

So when Samuels rapped sharply on his door one stormy day at the end of June, Booker was immediately suspicious.

"DeWitt? You in there?"

"Who wants to know?"

As usual, Samuels took this as an invitation and sidled inside, clicking the door shut behind him. He perched himself at the end of Booker's desk and inspected his fingernails studiously.

"It's come to my immediate recollection," he said, in his smarmiest Missouri drawl, "that you owe me a favor."

Booker grunted noncommittally. Samuels's eyes flicked in his direction, and he raised a questioning eyebrow. After several uncomfortable moments in which the two men merely stared at each other with varying degrees of contempt, Booker threw up his hands, slumped back in his chair, and groaned in defeat.

"What do you want, Samuels?"

"Money's always nice."

Booker pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ignore the headache that was already forming. "And barring that?"

"There's a job I've had you in my mind for, DeWitt," Samuels said. "Nice and simple. Hell, you might even enjoy it."

That never boded well, but what the other investigator had in mind was even more repellent than usual. "A little girl? Really, George?"

"She's not all that little," Samuels protested. "Word has it she's lately passed seventeen."

"Uh-_huh._" What Samuels did with his spare time was his own business, but Booker couldn't help grimacing in distaste.

"C'mon, Book, it's not like that," said Samuels, practically whining outright. "She's special, this one. She—"

"—Has these eyes?"

"She could be—"

"Maybe she's got a voice like a songbird."

Samuels was glaring at him fit to boil a kettle. Booker resisted the rising urge to snicker.

The other man plowed on determinedly. "My associates think she could—"

But Booker was having far too much fun to let this drop. "I know!" he interrupted with obnoxious cheer. "It's her bosom, isn't it?"

"God damn it, DeWitt, would you shut up? There's an eminent likelihood we'll be wanting her on our side. Got some sort of talent, but nobody's sayin' what it is. Don't want to talk about it, sounds like."

Booker was made no less incredulous by this cryptic statement, but he was intrigued. He propped his elbows on his desk and laced his fingers, weighing his options carefully. Finally he said, "I'm listening."

"Good God, I think I'm going to faint. This must be the first time in your life."

"Fuck you."

"Already got a girl for that, Book, unlike certain parties in this room whom I'll have the courtesy not to mention. Hey! This girl, maybe she'll _like _you, huh?"

Booker gave him a long, cold stare. "You got a point to make, Samuels, or do I have to remove you from my office before someone important comes calling?"

Samuels _tsk_ed. "Touchy."

"I will hurt you."

This was hardly a bluff and Samuels knew it; he huffed a sigh and then paused as if searching for the right words. Booker watched him with dispassionate interest.

Finally, Samuels spoke. "This girl you'll be liberating. As I said, there's something strange about her. Got her locked up in some sort of tower, and as word has it, she ain't never stood under the sky in all her life. Nobody gets locked up like that unless people have a powerfulfear of 'em, or an even more powerful want. We'll benefit greatly for having that girl on our side, DeWitt. You bring her back here so's we can speak with her, your life's yours again."

Booker pondered this for a moment. "…And 'we' would mean who, exactly?"

Samuels clasped his hands over his chest in a display of utter offence at Booker's distrust. "Why, New York division as a whole, of course!"

"Samuels, I swear…"

He coughed, glanced away, fidgeted on the edge of the desk. "If pressed, I would not deny the potentiality of, ah, downright ludicrous compensation for her recovery."

"Of course," Booker said, scowling and slouching forward to rest his head against his hands.

Samuels's gaze turned steely. "Not that it ought to matter to you," he said. "Your life's in the balance, my friend. I went to a great deal of effort to save you from that jackal Delaney, and it's high time you took steps to repay that little favor."

"I thought you and Delaney were getting along well these days."

"Oh, that's right," Samuels said coldly, quietly, and Booker was quite jarringly reminded of just why he so distrusted the man. "We _are_ getting along well. Very well, as a matter of fact. And it would be so very easy to let slip to him the fact that his belief in your current status of 'drowned' is sorely mistaken."

Booker's scowl deepened. "I take your point."

"Then you'll go?"

"Do I have to like it?"

"'Course not."

"…Yeah. Yeah, fine, I'll go, you happy?"

All traces of malice vanished from Samuels's demeanor in an instant. He clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and beamed at Booker amiably.

"Wonderful! There'll be a ship waiting for you at Providence Wharf above the Battery at seven-thirty tomorrow evening. Your contact's name is Lutece."

"Do I get any more information than that?"

Samuels rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Yeah. Don't get 'em talking."

He hopped down off Booker's desk and headed for the door. Right before he pulled it shut behind him, he stuck his head back into the office and added cheerfully, "Oh, and whatever you do… don't look down!"


	2. Woe Betide the Annan Water

"_Metaphysics is a dark ocean  
__without shores or lighthouse, strewn  
__with many a philosophic wreck."_

—Immanuel Kant

**CHAPTER TWO: **Woe Betide the Annan Water.

JULY 5, 1912

"Are you going to just sit there?"

"As compared to what? Standing?"

"Not standing. _Rowing_."

"Hadn't planned on it."

"So you expect me to shoulder the burden?"

"No, but I do expect you do to all the rowing."

"And why's that?"

"Coming here was your idea."

"_My _idea?"

"I've made it very clear that I don't believe in the exercise."

"What, the rowing?"

"No; I imagine that's wonderful exercise."

"Well, then what?"

It took a monumental effort of will for Booker to resist the mounting urge to hurl himself overboard— if not for the quiet, at least for the fact that leaping into the ocean would quite probably make him somewhat drier. Instead, he settled for rifling through the contents of the box that the sister Lutece had handed him for what felt like the fifteenth time(1). There were various odds and ends: photographs and postcards from New York and the city of Columbia, a card printed with New York's coordinates, and a tarnished silver badge; there was a volcanic repeating pistol, with a small carton of .38-caliber cartridges; a blurry, underexposed photograph of the girl, Elizabeth, the back scrawled with Samuels's insistent reminder to 'bring to New York unharmed!', as if he'd forget why he was out in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a thunderstorm in the middle of yet anotherargument between the siblings Lutece; a scrap of stock-card inscribed with three pictograms, the meanings of which continued to elude him; and a key in the semblance of a thaumatrope, with a bird on one side and a cage on the other. Booker twirled it idly between his thumb and forefinger for a moment, watching the bird blur into the cage and back out again; then he dropped it back into the box and made yet another attempt to get the siblings Lutece's attention.

This was easier said than done. Samuels had been right when he'd advised Booker not to get them talking: they hadn'tshut up since their little skiff had departed from the steamer _Cornucopia_, several hours previously.

"Perhaps you should ask him. I imagine he has a greater interest in getting there than I do."

"I imagine he does, but there's no point in asking."

"And why not?"

"Because he doesn't row."

"Excuse me," Booker interjected irritably, "how much longer?"

It would have been easier to rob a bank(4). "He doesn't _row_?"

"No, he _doesn't _row."

"Ah! I see what you mean. We've arrived."

The miserable little dinghy came bobbing erratically to a halt. Booker peered up through the beating rain to see an ancient, crumbling lighthouse, shrouded by a thick halo of fog, its light sweeping forlornly around over the empty black sea.

…_The Hell is a lighthouse doing way out in the middle of the Atlantic?_

No answer to Booker's internal dialogue was forthcoming, however. When it became apparent, after several moments of awkward silence, that he was not about to move, the brother Lutece prodded his knee and said, "Go on, then."

Booker looked down and found that their boat had come to rest beside a wharf as ancient and dilapidated-looking as the lighthouse to which it led. Between the rain, the fog, and the seething, choppy ocean, it was almost invisible, even when he was staring straight at it. Booker didn't really trust the structure, but he was damned if he was going to stay in the boat with the twins a moment longer.

He stretched a hand up to the nearest rung and grimaced when his fingertips met the slimy, rotten wood. The ladder seemed frail at an optimistic best, but it held his weight, and Booker climbed gingerly up onto the creaking jetty. It was, unsurprisingly, entirely deserted.

Turning around, however, revealed the eccentric(5) duo already piloting the rowboat away. They were still arguing, though Booker blessedly could not discern the subject over the combined din of the roaring sea and the steadily-lashing rain.

It took him a long moment to realize that there was even a problem; then he shouted, rather more desperately than he really would have liked, "_Hey_—! Is someone going to meet me here?"

"I should certainly hope so," the brother Lutece shouted back.

"It does seem like a dreadful place to be stranded," the sister added cheerily, and Booker groaned and slapped his forehead in utter frustration, making a mental note to add 'punching Samuels' to his list of tasks to complete if he ever made it back to New York.

But he couldn't just stand here moping about in the pouring rain. Maybe there would be someone inside the lighthouse. At the very least, he'd be out of the storm, so Booker set off down the jetty in the direction of the tower.

The boards were uneven and slanting, warped and slick from who knew how many years of exposure to the sea and sky; and every dozen seconds or so, a volley of waves would wash over them and around Booker's ankles, forcing him to tread carefully lest he be dragged away into the rushing dark.

He made his meticulous way towards the lighthouse, only to be blocked just before its base by a part of the wharf that had collapsed entirely. To continue on from there, he was going to have to scramble up a jagged tumble of boulders, slick with seaweed and sharp with barnacles. Booker heaved a weary sigh. Why was nothing ever easy?

Several minor cuts and a whole lot of swearing later, he made it to the relative safety of a low-walled walkway that curled halfway around the lighthouse to a large wooden door, upon which was pinned a note. The paper was splotchy and stained by the rain, and the dark red ink(6) had run, but the writing was still legibly addressed to him, and warned quite clearly that this was his last chance. It was not in a hand that he recognized, either as Samuels's haphazard scrawl or the Lutece twins' identical impeccable copperplate. Delaney, then? But he and his gang still believed Booker to be dead, didn't they? That had been the deal: bring the girl to Samuels and he wouldn't have a good portion of the New York underground trying to kill him.

…Again.

Thoroughly unnerved, Booker knocked heavily upon the lighthouse door; then, not sure whether or not to take the lack of response as a good sign, he slipped cautiously inside. The ground floor of the lighthouse was as deserted as the wharf, but tinny music was drifting down from somewhere up above him, jazzy and faint. After a brief inspection of his surroundings, which revealed nothing except the mildly irritating fact that his host appeared to be deeply religious, Booker headed up the stairs.

And stopped dead in his tracks.

"Oh, _shit_."

Someone had been here to meet him, but that someone appeared to have been stabbed multiple times, and then shot for good measure. Another note, pinned to the bloodstained burlap sack that had been pulled over the unfortunate soul's head, warned Booker yet again of what he was supposed to do (bring Samuels the girl), and how many chances he had left to do it (none).

He ought to have been worried, or angry, or pitying, but in actuality all he felt was severe aggravation. How much of a simpleton did Samuels think he was? He raised his eyes to the ceiling and said aloud, "_Alright, _already! I get the point!"

There was no answer; the corpse appeared to have been the tower's only resident.

Idly hoping, for said cadaver's sake, that death was as rapturous as its former occupant had seemed to believe, Booker poked around the chamber a bit more thoroughly before heading up another set of stairs in the hopes of finding some indication of what he was supposed to do next. It seemed unlikely that the entire city of Columbia was hidden away in the lighthouse, and Lutece had been maddeningly uninformative as to the purpose of their diversion here.

His search, fortunately, was not entirely fruitless: there was a map stuck with pins mounted upon the far wall, and what looked like a train schedule tacked next to it. Each row of the schedule appeared to correspond to a pin on the map; one such pin off the coast of Maine marked the lighthouse's position, at least according to Booker's best estimation. He doubted there would be a train coming here any time soon, but at least he might be able to get a boat back to the States if he couldn't figure out what he was supposed to be doing here.

There was a phone on the cluttered desk below the map, as if placed there for the express purpose of answering this question(8), but it was dead. He hadn't really expected anything different, so he dropped the receiver back onto its cradle and continued upwards, emerging onto the widow's walk that encircled the very top of the lighthouse. The rain had lessened to a fine, steady drizzle that, up here where the wind blew stiff and sharp, stung at Booker's skin like needles. Far, far in the distance, the lights of the shore shone faintly against the horizon. Every few seconds, the beacon came arching past on its tireless round, warning passing ships away from… what, exactly? There were no shipping lanes this far from shore; even the _Cornucopia_, the ship that had come the closest to the lighthouse on its route to Newfoundland, had only passed within more than an hour's rowing of the place. And any ship that was coming here specifically would know what to look for, so what was the point?

Nevertheless, the tower's lantern shone so bright that even shielding his eyes did little to keep Booker from being blinded. He fumbled his way around the widow's walk, feeling faintly foolish as he did so. There wasn't going to be anything up here. There wasn't going to be anything anywhere in this goddamn lighthouse, it wasn't even supposed to be out here, and what was he even _doing _up in this—

Booker stopped abruptly. There was a large, heavy door leading into the lantern room: a door far larger and more ornate than the sort that had any business in the wall of a wayward lighthouse. What appeared to be an elaborate lock, strung with three bells, was affixed across the front of the door, barring the way; above each of the bells was an engraved pictogram, and after a moment in which he just stared stupidly at the strange door with its strange lock, Booker realized he recognized them.

Hastily, he rummaged through his satchel until he found the Luteces' cedarwood box, and managed to fish out the scrap of stock-card. The symbols did indeed match, he saw, which meant the bells must serve as some sort of combination lock. Why they couldn't just use a good sturdy padlock like everyone else, Booker didn't know; but it wasn't his business, and anyways the sooner he got back out of the rain, the better. He dropped the card back into his bag and prodded at the bells experimentally. They produced a series of pretty, mournful chimes. Booker was now almost certain that the people who'd built this place had endeavored to make it seem as melancholy and poetical as possible. Great. The sooner he was done with this job, the happier he'd be.

The last bell gave its chime, a high note that held for a long moment without fading.

Quite a long moment, actually, longer than it ought to be, and growing louder. That was odd. Booker narrowed his eyes and peered more closely at the mechanism, which was now vibrating frenetically.

_What in the world—?_

Very suddenly there came a noise, much like a foghorn, except that it was about ten times as loud and seemed to issue from directly behind him. Booker jumped and looked around in alarm, but there was no indication as to its source. A moment later, the sound came again, much more faintly, as if muted by great distance. Then again, more closely, and then the sound of the rain was all but blocked out entirely by a great cacophony of low fluting horns.

Booker gave up. He was either dreaming, dead, or the victim of a ridiculously elaborate prank, but either way, he thought, he just wasn't going to question it anymore.

The lock split and folded upwards out of the way, and the door clunked and whirred and swung open to reveal…

A chair. A shiny leather-and-steel barber's chair, set into a dais about a foot above the lantern-room door, as innocent-looking as if its presence here wasn't absurd to the extreme.

"Oh, for the love of—" Muttering obscenities in Samuels's direction, Booker circled the chair, vaguely expecting it to explode as soon as he touched it. Wouldn't be the strangest thing he'd seen this evening by far, but… traps, especially overcomplicated ones, weren't Samuels's style. Bullets and bowie knives and the bottom of the Hudson, straightforward and efficient, were, so this left dreaming, death, or reality as available options. Booker's dreams were never this detailed, and if this was Hell(9), the Church was going to have a whole lot of explaining to do; so, now feeling the inexplicable and slightly maddening urge to laugh, he decided rather helplessly on reality.

This having been settled, there wasn't really anything left but to go sit in the fancy chair. He wasn't eager to stay here making conversation with the corpse on the passing chance that a ship would stop by, and he wasn't about to try swimming to shore any time soon, either. This much fanfare over something as incongruous and yet as mundane as a red barbershop chair had to mean something, so, incautiously pushing his doubts to the back of his mind, Booker climbed up and settled himself into the chair.

And then had the gall to act alarmed when restraints immediately affixed themselves around his wrists and ankles. He jerked against them in surprise, and when they failed to release, fought all the more desperately to break free.

It was to no avail, of course. The process, whatever the hell that actually was, had already begun. Heavy plates were folding upwards out of the floor and damn it, why hadn't he noticed their outlines when he'd walked in? A gentle female voice was telling him to stay calm and prepare for ascension, which predictably had exactly the opposite of the intended effect. Booker struggled valiantly to break free, but against heavy iron shackles even he was outmatched.

Oblivious to its occupant's efforts, the chair raised up off its dais with a loud pneumatic whirr. The cone of metal panels closed around it, trapping Booker in a claustrophobic pod broken only by a small, circular porthole. He caught a flash of fire below him, and then the floor of the capsule sealed itself off beneath his feet. Before he could register anything other than immense foreboding with a generous helping of _Oh, you've gotta be _kidding _me_, the entire thing began to vibrate, and a cacophonous roar started up beneath his feet. There was a massive jolt— Booker was reminded, in the vague far-off way that one is when they feel sure that they are about to die, of his introduction to electrical sabotage— and then, suddenly, he was flying.

_All right, _now_ I'm dead_, he thought, still in that detached, faintly amused way; then he realized that no, he was still in the little pod, and he was, in fact, flying. He gave one more heave against the shackles that pinned his wrists and ankles, just in case, but they still held him fast. There was nothing he could do but stare out the porthole in utter bewilderment and try to remain calm, as lighthouse, jetty, ocean, and world fell away below him. Rain smeared the glass, momentarily opaquing everything beyond, and then the absurd flying machine broke through the clouds with a cheerful "_Hallelujah!_", and he stopped trying to make sense of the night's events entirely.

There was a city in the sky.

Booker's little flying machine drifted gently above thick, puffy storm clouds, their crests burnished purple-gold in the pale predawn light. And in, and above, and amongst these clouds, there were buildings.

They rested atop clusters of massive, colorful balloons, crawling upwards against each other in a rising tangle of brick and cobblestone; they flanked narrow, dim alleyways and wide, verdant boulevards shaded by broad-leafed elms; they formed floating islands the size of a city block, and blocks the size of cities. Huge propellers churned the clouds into long, fanciful curls, which wound themselves gracefully around towers that glittered in the rising sun. Dirigibles paneled in auburn wood and filigreed brass drifted to and fro, their silhouettes like so many fish flitting about in this exquisite archipelago.

And in the middle of it all, taking up a good third of Booker's field of vision, there was an angel.

It was easily twice the size of New York's bronze Lady Liberty, and older by far. Whereas Liberty, though dimmed by her thirty-year vigil over New York Harbor, still shone a muted golden when the sun was right, this angel's wings had been tarnished a dark, mottled blue-green from weather and wear. She looked out over her soaring kingdom with an expression of serene, profound, and utter sorrow, and her outspread hands seemed as much a supplication as a blessing.

Booker realized his mouth was open. He shut it, embarrassed at having been caught gawking(10). When Samuels had said 'Columbia', this was not what he had imagined at all. He'd known _about _the city, sure, in the way one knows about the existence of slime molds but never really devotes much thought to the matter of their existence. He'd regarded the entire affair with the same vague disgust one might have for slime molds(11) as well; the war had been over for two decades when news went out of the city's secession, and shunning an entire country when it had failed to uphold their aggressively-misguided beliefs just seemed childish.

Well, whatever Booker had been expecting, it wasn't this entire, impossible city spread out below him in all its airborne glory. He'd seen zeppelins before, of course— it was hard not to, in a city that had just finished constructing the world's largest aerodrome— but a whole little world supported by nothing but hydrogen balloons strained credulity at the very least. Yet here it was, the errant city-state, shame of the South, drifting across the summer dawn in all its shining gold-edged glory.

By that point, Booker's pod had descended to the level of the lower tiers of buildings, and then abruptly there was a mechanical-sounding _clunk_ and the vessel came to a halt, landing on a railed walkway that overlooked what appeared to be some sort of federal or governmental complex, all white marble walls, domed roofs, and ivy-wrapped pillars. Booker sighed in relief: he'd never been overly fond of small spaces, and he had a great deal of work to do.

But before he could begin figuring out a way to extricate himself from the chair, there was another loud mechanical grinding noise, and the little pod began to descend. Sunlight filtered down through slits in the wall of the shaft, broken occasionally by a narrow catwalk or the silhouette of huge, churning gears. There was writing engraved into the walls of the shaft, carved so that it caught the slanting beams of light and threw them unavoidably back into the eyes of whichever unfortunate person happened to be trapped in the capsule at the time. Booker did his sullen best to ignore the words, which spelled out some bullshit about someone called 'the Prophet' and the glory of this 'new Eden'.

And then at last the pod came to rest, setting down on a dais much like the one from which it had originally ascended. Beyond the porthole, Booker could see tiered candelabras, and a flash of brilliant stained glass. Several moments later, the restraints at his arms and ankles mercifully released, the capsule door whirred outward and folded down, and Booker was free.

The first thing he thought upon his release was, _Oh, great. More water. _He'd only just started to feel dry again, and there was a rather large puddle on the capsule's floor beneath his feet. But he wasn't about to stay sitting in this chair until someone came to collect him or, worse, until it decided to take off again, so he got stiffly to his feet and assessed his surroundings more thoroughly.

Water poured steadily from two great spouts at opposite ends of the chamber in which he stood, filling the lowered floor below the dais to about knee-height before rushing off, down a set of curving stairs. Directly across from him was another raised platform beneath the huge stained-glass window he'd glimpsed on his descent.

'Window' felt an insufficient word to describe the piece; it took up the entire wall from floor to ceiling and depicted an elderly bearded man, gesturing to a group of fawning supplicants towards a gold-haloed city in the sky. Despite Booker's general distaste in regards to the subject matter, he had to admit it was an impressive work of art. He sloshed across the room towards it, grumbling half-hearted curses as icy water once again soaked through the legs of his pants and into his boots. It was quite cold in the stone chamber, despite the multitude of candles that grew from every available surface like mushrooms, and he found himself hugging his arms to his chest. He wasn't about to shiver in front of this mural— he didn't want to give it the satisfaction.

_Booker, you're going insane_, the little voice he'd begun attributing to his subconscious(14) nagged, but he ignored it. He studied the colorful glass intently for a moment more, and then looked down, intending to move on. A glint of light, as of the reflection from something metallic, caught his eye. He bent and fumbled around under the rack of candles, coming up with a few large silver coins: a wayward offering, perhaps, or loose change dropped by an inattentive worshiper. Either way, Booker thought wryly, as he turned the coins over in his palm, he'd more need of them than the mural did. He tucked the money into his pocket and moved on in the direction of the stairs.

They led down and around a slight corner to another circular chamber much the same as the first. This room's space, though, was filled almost completely by a statue of the man from the stained-glass mural. That had to be their so-called Prophet, then. Comstock, hadn't his name been?

Above the statue was a carved marble banner that read, in crisp capital letters, _The seed of the Prophet shall sit the throne and drown in flame the mountains of Man._

"Seed of the prophet, huh?" Booker regarded the carving with a small, cynical smile. Well, whatever these people wanted to think was holy, he supposed. Shaking his head, he continued down the last few steps, only to find that the water here was a good deal deeper, brushing at the hem of his overshirt and chilling him to the bone. Eager to be out in the sun, he hurriedly rounded the base of the statue and nearly collided with a man in a long white cassock, who stood at the top of another flight of downward-spiraling stairs.

"'Scuse me," Booker said, trying not to sound quite as harried as he felt, "but where am I?"

The man in white gave him a broad and earnest grin. "Heaven, friend," he said. "Or as close as we'll see 'til Judgment Day."

Booker found himself pressing his mouth into a thin line. Well, so much for learning anything useful. Irritated, he took his leave of the man and entered the adjacent chamber.

And stopped dead in his tracks. There was another stained-glass wall here, this one casting every shadow and angle in lavender and indigo and silver, a brilliant contrast to its precursor's orange, scarlet, and gold. The figure it depicted was a solitary woman, and even in such an unforgiving medium as glass, Booker could tell that every detail had been rendered with exquisite care. He stared up at her upswept dark hair, her midnight-blue walking gown, the haughty set of her narrow, icy eyes. Her accompanying marble banner proclaimed, _And in my womb shall grow the seed of the Prophet._

Booker had no perception of how long he stood there in the cold, rippling water of the temple, staring at the woman's face. He wanted to shout at her, to kick something, or laugh, or fall to his knees, or make a witty remark. In the end, though, the first coherent thought that came to him was a disgusted, _He knew—_ _Samuels _knew!_ That goddamn bastard knew she was here, _that's_ what this is about—!_

Finally an odd, tight sort of resignation settled in, and he managed to gather his wits about him enough to make a further inspection of the room in which he stood. The lavender light that filtered through the window fell over rows of wooden pews, the water between scattered with pink lilies. There was an altar spanning the raised floor below the window, and Booker sloshed towards it with that same detached feeling that had been settling in ever since the strange firework-driven flying machine had lifted off from the lighthouse— God, had it only been an hour or two ago? It already felt like he'd spent days in the labyrinthine temple. Before the table, more flowers were strewn: lilacs and roses and lilies, lilies, lilies.

_The flower of mourning… _Booker thought, idly picking one up from the damp cobblestones and inspecting it. It was fresh, perhaps only just cut this morning, and gave off a cloying, dusky scent. Scowling suddenly, he cast the flower aside, dragging his fingers over the heavy velveteen drape that had been laid across the altar. At the end of the table, surrounded by flowers, candles, and coins, was a device. Booker picked it up and studied it, curiosity momentarily overcoming the stew of bitterness and confusion. He'd never seen the object's like before: a heavy wedge of dark wood, half-concealing a small black disc not unlike a phonograph. A series of dials and buttons formed a half-circle around the base of the disc, each of them labeled in fine ink print. At one edge of the wooden wedge was a small brass trumpet, again much like that of a gramophone; at the other was a faded, water-damaged tintype of the woman, set under a circle of glass. The device was odd enough to warrant further study, but Booker wasn't planning on sticking around, and so, glancing about to make sure he wasn't being observed, he stuffed it surreptitiously into his bag.

Behind the array of offerings, there was a painting of the woman, set into a heavy gold frame, and Booker paused again to trace her face with his fingertips. It was clear that this portrait had been the reference, if not the actual inspiration, for the window: she bore the same blue walking gown and the same cool, haughty expression. Pearls dotted her ears and throat, their fastens picked out in bright gold paint. Booker sighed and made to move on, but something else caught his eye. He leaned down to inspect the frame more closely, and found that there was a plaque set into its bottom edge, which he had not noticed, transfixed as he'd been by the lady's face.

_In Beloved Memory of Our Lady A. Comstock  
__(May the Prophet bless her and keep her.)  
__1869 – 1896_

So she was dead after all. Perhaps it was for the better, Booker thought; at least then there wouldn't be the danger of having to face her while he was here in Columbia.

Either way, though, he wasn't keen on spending any more time in Lady Comstock's memorial, so he moved on. There was a third alcove off of the central vestibule on the other side of the statue, but all Booker wanted by then was to escape. He caught a glance of that chamber's glass mosaic as he passed by, though. A multitude of bright, pale colors depicted the Prophet Comstock and his Lady smiling over an infant child, as blue-eyed and dark-haired as its mother. The piece was entitled _The Lamb: the future of our city. _

Booker resisted the urge to make a face at the mural as he passed. The priest, or worshiper, or whatever the agonizingly-optimistic man in white was, gave him a curious look. He was no doubt wondering what business Booker had looking so dour in such a holy place, but the latter ignored him. He headed down the stairs, hands stuffed into his pockets, kicking sullenly at the burbling water as he spiraled downwards. At last he reached the bottom and surged into the chest-high pool that filled what appeared to be the final chamber. This room was easily twice as large as all of its predecessors combined. Its vaulted ceilings disappeared into gloom, supported by thick, fluted columns of marble. Between each two of the central walk of columns were poised a pair of stone angels, wings unfurled, outstretched hands holding tall white candles. Their wings were limned in blue by the brilliant light of the sky, which shone through a massive, but mercifully veneration-free, window at the far end.

Between Booker and freedom, however, lay a long expanse of water, dotted with bobbing candles, and, at the end of this, an entire congregation of figures in white cassocks. Beyond them, gesticulating wildly and speaking with passion and volume in equal force, was poised a single figure in black. He cried with great fervor upon the glories of the Prophet, and his victories, and his trials.

Booker grimaced. Wasn't that just _lovely_. There didn't appear to be any other way out of the huge hall; he was going to have to interact with at least a few of them if he was going to get out of here. Hopefully he wouldn't have to speak very much.

Shivering, Booker waded down the length of the vault, sending candles spinning and bobbing in his wake. Water lapped over several of them, snuffing them out, and he felt a small surge of vindictive(15) satisfaction. One last candle floated between him and the cluster of white-robed votaries, and he flicked it over resentfully, watching the flame sputter out with a grim little smile. Then he splashed forwards again, up a shallow flight of slick stone steps, and shouldered his way through the solemn crowd.

The priest gazed up at him from one final, shallow pool of water. "Is it someone new?" he said, with the same eagerness and fortitude with which he'd delivered his sermon. "Another traveler from the Sodom below, come to join us in our new Eden?"

Booker sighed. "I just need passage into the city," he said wearily.

"Ah, but the only way into the city is through the cleansing waters of baptism," said the priest, extending a calloused hand to him with somber grandeur. "What say you, brother? Are you ready to wash away your sins?"

Booker wasn't all that fond of the idea of punching out an unarmed priest who obviously didn't mean any harm, no matter how unpleasant the prospect of being further saturated with the frigid, and probably highly unsanitary, waters of the temple. He sighed again, adjusted the strap of his rucksack against his shoulder, gritted his teeth, and took the priest's proffered hand.

The priest immediately hauled him down into the lower pool, yanking him off-balance with a loud splash.

"I bless you, brother," he cried, "in the name of our Prophet, in the name of our Fathers, and in the name of our Lord!"

And with that, he grabbed Booker by the hair and shoved him bodily into the water. Unprepared for this sudden dunking as he was, Booker inhaled quite a lot of it, choked, and struggled valiantly to get his face back into the air again. The priest, perhaps taking the meaning of Booker's thrashing about, grasped him by the collar of his shirt and heaved him upright again. Booker sputtered and coughed violently, eyes stinging, water streaming from his nose and mouth. Before he could catch his breath, though, the overzealous priest exclaimed, "I don't know, brothers, but this one doesn't look clean to me!" and shoved him under again.

Then, suddenly, Booker was let go, only to be taken by a fierce and turbulent current and dragged away. Distantly he noticed himself bobbing to the surface once or twice, and caught flashes of blue sky— brilliant, verdant leaves— marble wrapped in rose vines—

Then the water took hold of him once more.

Moments later, darkness followed.

* * *

.

* * *

1. It was, as a matter of fact, the seventeenth(2).

2._ Eighteenth_. You're not counting the time that he dropped it and had to put everything back(3).

3. Ah, you're right; my mistake. Eighteenth it is, then.

4. He speaks from experience, I see. An outright paragon of moral fortitude, this one.

5. The adjective our good Mr. DeWitt's thoughts might best have been condensed into was a good deal stronger, and has therefore been modified for the sake of our more delicate readers. The man does have _such _a colorful vocabulary.

6. At least, he sincerely hoped it was ink(7).

7. It was, of course. Why, what sort of dreadful cliché were you expecting? _Honestly_.

8. It wasn't. You didn't really think we were going to make this that easy, did you?

9. Booker wasn't really the religious sort. This being said, he had no illusions that he'd be going to Heaven, if in fact there was an afterlife; and if there wasn't, he wouldn't be around to know anything about it. A true master of deduction, our Mr. DeWitt.

10. The fact that nobody had actually caught him notwithstanding.

11. This is entirely unfair; slime molds are eminently fascinating life-forms and—(11)

12._ Robert_(13).

13. Right. Sorry.

14. Incorrectly, of course. You'd think the man would have noticed it wasn't his own voice, but no. I _told_ you this was a bad idea.

15. _Childish_ is what it was, but Mr. DeWitt objected to that particular adjective rather forcefully for some reason.


	3. Shanty for the American Pastime

_AN: Hello hello! First off, thanks so, so much to everyone who reviewed! You guys are great gosh I'm so glad you're enjoying it ;u;_

_- Free Lancer93 - I was so very disappointed when it came to light that Booker _hadn't _known our dear First Lady, especially since there were a lot of signs that seemed to indicate he had! And it seems absurd that he wouldn't have known about Columbia beforehand, he's a detective for crying out loud!_

_Either way, I'm glad you like the changes I've made so far- that's what I'm hoping for after all c:_

_- Durxa - WOW WOW WOW thanks so much for the glowing review gosh ;3; I'm really glad you're enjoying it so much! Such a visually stunning game really deserves some stunning prose, so I'm extremely happy to hear that I was able to do it justice for you!  
Also, the fact that your avatar is Legion makes me inordinately happy he'S SUCH A KAWAII AMIRITE_

_- Laengruk213100 - Yeah, there was plenty of foreshadowing! Saying much more will spoil the story, but I will say that I did _not _connect the name 'Anna' to Elizabeth at _all_. The girl Esther did call her 'Annabelle', but there's no way she'd've known that Elizabeth _was _Anna. I assumed... well. If my cryptic statements aren't cluing you in, you'll figure out what I assumed soon enough ;] And as for the finger... that might've worked better if it had been explained in something other than a voxophone, with which there's always the possibility of it not getting found. Crucial story details should not be revealed solely in collectibles in my opinion.  
And in a sense you were right about Booker being the true Prophet... though in this story, that particular twist is being disregarded entirely._

_Also, expect a fair delay between this chapter and the next one. Chapter 4 is currently just over twelve pages (almost 9k words, dear god) and not even close to being finished, and I'm trying to keep up a buffer of at least 20 pages, which means that Chapter 4 won't be posted until I'm well into Chapter 5. I'm sorry about the wait, but this chapter and the next are both going to be so ridiculously long that I hope it makes up for it._

_And, as always, I as a fanfiction author live for your feedback. Even if it's something you don't like or want to critique, I'm happy to hear it! TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU THINK COME ON GUYS_

_Now that that's out of the way, I hope you enjoy the chapter!_

* * *

"_There are decades where__  
__nothing happens; and then there are weeks  
in which decades happen."  
_—Vladimir Lenin

**CHAPTER THREE:** Shanty for the American Pastime.

JULY 6, 1912

"Mr. DeWitt? _…Mr. DeWitt!_"

"Uh?" Booker came round to the sound of someone hammering impatiently at his office door. He felt foggy and unfocused, and his head throbbed in time with the ferocious knocking. He blinked around at his office blearily, momentarily bewildered as to how he'd gotten there. He ran a hand down the side of his face, attempted to smooth down his tousled hair, scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. No airships, no impossible cities, no insufferable(1) twins greeted him when he looked up again. He must have fallen asleep at his desk.

What a weird dream.

The insistent shouting came again. "Mr. DeWitt! Open this door!"

"Ngh— wha— Samuels? Is that you? I, uh." Booker paused, doing his best to banish his grogginess, and frowned at this decidedly odd turn of coincidence. Saying 'I had a dream about you' seemed neither prudent, wise, nor particularly masculine, so he decided on, "Did we have an appointment?"

The only answer was a renewed intensity to the knocking. "We had a deal, DeWitt! _Open the damn door!_"

"A deal? I don't remember any—" Cutting himself off, Booker rose, disengaging the safety and thumbing back the hammer of his pistol as he did so. He'd seen Samuels kill before, and it was never preceded by uncontrolled anger like this. If Samuels was going to kill him, the first Booker would know about it would be when he was shot in the back of the head. There were plenty of other people in the city with reason to want him dead anyways, people who were much more likely to assault him as soon as he opened the door, so it was best to take precautions.

Warily, Booker crossed the room, gun at the ready. He squinted through the bubbly frosted glass, but there was no silhouette beyond.

_Curiouser and curiouser_, he thought dryly. He unlatched the door and opened it as narrowly as he could, leaning against the adjacent wall to peer through the slat. As soon as the latch drew back, though, the door was flung violently open, nearly knocking Booker down.

He immediately scrabbled back into position to face the door, index finger hovering over the trigger of his pistol. In his sights lay not a disgruntled acquaintance, however, but the skyline of New York City; but it was not a New York City that Booker knew. It was too high, too bright, made jagged and unfamiliar by the presence of too many buildings.

And it was burning.

Bombs were falling like shooting stars, and the whole block shuddered violently with each explosion, even at this great distance.

But that distance was lessening; the strikes were approaching far too fast, Booker realized with a sudden shock of terror, raining destruction upon Broadway in rapid succession. They were going to hit the office, he had to get out, had to run, to do _something_—!

A sudden roaring overhead, followed by a blinding white light, froze Booker in his tracks before he could even attempt to escape. There was an airship directly above him, fire pouring from its cannons, and he could only stare in horror as its next volley headed straight for his block, straight for him.…

Then white fire blazed across his vision, and a searing, brilliant, distant sort of pain consumed him. Within seconds he knew nothing at all.

* * *

1. What! How rude! We never insult _his_ abrasive demeanor, now do we?

* * *

The sound of birds woke Booker for the second time. He blinked his eyes open, only to immediately shut them again with a muffled groan of pain when they were flooded with blinding sunlight.

Slowly, he raised his head and squinted around. He was lying on a flat, sloping moss-covered boulder half-submerged in a pool of warm, still water. Rosebushes surrounded him, their fragrant crimson blooms bobbing gently in the faint, surprisingly cold breeze. Trees above him, aspen and birch and elm, split the light of the morning sun into myriad shifting shadows; and beyond them lay the high, brilliant, endless blue dome of a cloudless summer sky.

Groaning, Booker levered himself up onto his elbows, and then into a sitting position. His chest ached fiercely, and he seemed to be having trouble getting enough air. His head pounded in time with his heartbeat, and his back and shoulders were stiff and sore. He felt as if he'd woken up to a particularly vengeful hangover, rather than from his latest(2) brush with drowning. That idiot priest really had to learn the definition of 'baptism' before he started shoving people underwater.

Gingerly, Booker stood and looked around. He was still standing in water, of course, but at least he was outside, and, more importantly, relatively warm. His leather rucksack was still with him, and he shuffled through the contents, taking stock of what had been damaged. Many of his papers were utterly ruined, including his city map, and the device from the woman's memorial was likely destroyed as well; but his gun, though currently thoroughly useless without a good cleaning and some fresh powder, was still intact, as was the box with his badge and the thaumatrope key. Satisfied that he wasn't going to have to step out into a new city entirely unprepared, Booker looked up once more and took a moment to assess his surroundings.

He appeared to have emerged from the temple into the same complex he'd seen as the flying machine had made its final descent. The courtyard was all roses and ivy and worn stone angels, and standing around him were monumental statues of three of the United States' more influential politicians. The way in which they had been arranged, precisely positioned to be crowned by the morning sun and proffering objects of golden brass, was decidedly religious. Booker looked them up and down distastefully, starting to wonder if there was anything the people of this city _didn't_ worship.

It didn't look like it; there were more white cassocks kneeling in the water below the statues, hands clasped, heads bowed, murmuring prayers to the statues of the Founding Fathers. Emphasis on the religious meaning of 'Fathers', it sounded like; Booker was beginning to think that maybe the list of things the Columbians didn't worship started with 'an actual God'.

Well, he couldn't stay standing here in the water exuding silent disapproval at the monks(5) all day, so he sloshed across the little pool to a set of mossy stairs, which, he found to his delight, led up onto dry grass. His boots squished uncomfortably as he pulled himself out of the water, and they were probably going to start growing moss themselves soon, but at least he was finally on dry land again.

At the top of the stairs Booker was met by another monk, who earnestly told him that "The Prophet fills our lungs with water, so they may better love the air"— as if that was somehow supposed to make Booker want to punch him any less.

Getting into a fistfight with a religious official was still fairly low on Booker's agenda, however, especially since he felt rather like a drowned rat(6). Besides, he still had a job to do, so he gave the oblivious man a cold glare and staggered past him through the garden. Several marble archways and white cassocks later, he arrived at a heavy double door, embossed in gold and crowned by one final marble banner, which once again announced that _The seed of the Prophet will sit the throne and drown in flame the mountains of Man. _The message held a good deal more foreboding now than it had the first time, if the altarpieces told a true story and the Prophet's Lady really _had_ borne that seed.

_With a dam like that, I do believe it actually might_, Booker thought, half-bitter, half-wry, and he was filled by a terrible, slow-burning dread. It took him a moment to realize he was clenching his fists, and he took a deep breath, fighting back the agonizing urge to claw at the back of his hand and forcing himself to relax. It didn't matter if they'd had a kid, he told himself sternly; it was their prisoner he was after, not their progeny.

Swallowing the rising fear that he'd dug himself into even deeper trouble by taking this job, Booker stepped forwards and pressed his palms against the cool doors. The only way out was forward, he thought determinedly, and he was going to have to either face or ignore all of his fears if he was going to get home any time soon.

Booker was a master of ignoring things that he really ought to deal with, so, taking one last steadying breath, he pushed open the doors of the temple garden and stepped out to face the music of the city in the sky.

* * *

2. '_Latest_,' he says casually! He's got more experience at being drowned than he has at robbing banks(3),(4).

3. _[See the 4th note of the previous chapter if you find yourself in need of a reminder. —Ed.]_

4. To be honest, I can't say I'm even remotely surprised.

5. Or whatever the Hell they were; Booker was less interested in debating semantics than he was standing around in pools of water for the rest of his life, so he settled for calling them monks and left it at that.

6. He more than faintly resembled one, too.

* * *

It was a great relief to be out amongst the people again. Booker's fatigue and apprehension all but vanished as soon as he was outside of the complex, to be replaced by a cautious enjoyment. He'd lived in large cities all his life, and had entertained fancies of traveling the world when he was younger. Those had fallen through after... well. He _had_ traveled, after a fashion, but it didn't quite count as a vacation when so many people were dead for it(7).

Nevertheless, making his way through the beautiful, bustling streets of Columbia felt almost like something Booker had elected to do, and he found his mood rapidly improving as he deftly navigated the crowds that milled about what he assumed was the city center.

There was some sort of festival being put on that day: fireworks exploded in gaudy rounds every three-quarters of a minute or so, and brassy music and carnival smells drifted along the cobbled streets. Either the Independence Day celebrations had been particularly exuberant this year, or Columbia had its own set of holidays. Booker guessed the latter; somehow he couldn't see them wanting to praise anything having to do with their 'Sodom below'. Even on a festival day, the attire of choice seemed to be muted colors and modest cloths; he was acutely aware that he stood out like a sore thumb, but the people of Columbia greeted him with general good cheer, if a little caution, and eventually he began to relax and study the celebrations curiously. A parade in celebration of the child of Comstock and his Lady dampened Booker's spirits briefly, but shortly thereafter he found himself happily distracted by an enormous mechanical horse. It was a beauty of a thing: a triumph of machinery, all white enamel and brass gears, and it snorted and stamped and tossed its head to put a living horse to shame. Booker walked all around it, studying it in fascination and bending down to peer at the mechanics between its joints, until the owner of the ice cart to which it was harnessed came and told him off. He stood and patted the machine's withers amiably, getting several odd looks for it, but if the conservative celebrants of Columbia had a problem with him, well, it was _their _problem, not his.

Several palmed apples later, Booker had more or less dried out and was actually feeling rather good about the whole affair. Maybe Samuels had actually meant it when he'd said that Booker might enjoy this job.

Of course, our more jaded readers will realize that it is at this moment that the first catch tends to show up, and so it was with some nigh-unbelievably literarily-appropriate timing that the first poster caught Booker's attention. It was as tall as he was, mounted on a wall, and depicted a hooded Grim Reaper figure bearing down upon a wide-eyed, fearful lamb. _Beware the False Shepherd, for he has come to lead our Lamb astray! _it read, in ominous capitals.

The Lamb was Comstock's kid, wasn't it? Booker could imagine all sorts of people who'd want to hold the child of a man like that hostage, for all sorts of reasons. He wondered if the poster was being metaphorical, or referring to someone in particular. He hoped it was the former; the latter held the implication of far too many complications for Booker's liking. He did not want to get caught up in any more conflict than he had to.

Shrugging as he turned away from the poster, Booker forced the returning sense of unease to the back of his mind. Enemies of the state weren't his problem at the moment. If he had to deal with some other person coming in and antagonizing the Prophet, he would do so when it actually became an issue. Until then, he would proceed according to the assumption that it was business as usual. He ducked under a turnstile, shouldered through a crowd of tittering young women all bearing enormous and fragrant flowery hats, made note of a sign that pointed him in the direction of a raffle, rounded a corner, and found himself suddenly in the shadow of the angel.

If it had looked big from the air, it was massive when viewed on foot: it cast a shadow over the entire side-street in which Booker had paused, and he had to crane his neck and lean backwards a little just to see up to the top. It really did put Lady Liberty to shame, he thought with an amused frown; New York ought to feel disgraced by itself.

The puerile 'mine's-bigger' contest was going to have to wait, though, since the angel was Booker's intended destination. Monument Island, Lutece had told him it was called, and since that was where the girl Elizabeth was said to be imprisoned, that was where he was going to go. Booker frowned, wishing he still had his map; the city was a maze as it was, and it had taken him a good forty minutes' wandering just to come within sight of it. The angel didn't appear to be connected to any buildings, and Booker's stomach turned at the prospect of having to fly again. Zeppelins were all well and good when they were docking at Empire a thousand feet above him, but he had no desire to be inside one, soon or ever.

However, though there were many signs pointing towards Monument Island throughout the city, all of them led to dead ends. '_Closed for renovations_', one sign said; '_structure unsound_', said another. A poster of the angel in shining gold above one such chained gate read, _The Tower protects the Lamb from the False Shepherd__. _Below that was another, newer poster, upon which were the words '_Closed by order of the Prophet_'.

It wasn't that Booker didn't believe in coincidences; it was just that, when Samuels was involved, the coincidences seemed to line up just a little too perfectly.

"'The Tower protects the Lamb from'..." Booker trailed off, grimacing. Either that meant that Monument Island was highly weaponized— in which case, how terrifying did the girl Elizabeth have to _be_ to wind up imprisoned there?— or that it was the Lamb locked up inside for protection, which meant that not only was Booker going to have to find a way inside and then back out again without bringing the whole city down on his head, but that he was going to have to do so while kidnapping the daughter of said city's beloved leader.

Booker had a sinking feeling it was going to be the latter.

"You couldn't have mentioned this to me earlier, Samuels?" he grumbled to himself as he made his way along a residential block close to the edge of the island.

To his surprise, he got an answer of sorts. "You Mr. DeWitt?"

Booker looked around for the speaker, a little startled. "Uh— yeah?"

"Telegram for you, sir!"

Booker looked down and found himself staring at a grubby child of about ten years of age, wearing a brown corduroy coat patched at the elbows and a round felt cap. The kid waved a slip of yellow card urgently; when Booker took it, he scurried away before he could be questioned further.

Frowning, Booker examined the telegram.

_DeWitt STOP  
Do not alert Comstock to your presence STOP  
Whatever you do, do not pick #77 STOP  
Lutece_

"What the...?"

Booker glared at the card, as if the sheer might of his perplexed stare could somehow force its contents to make sense. When this predictably failed to be an effective tactic, he huffed irritably, dropped the card into his pack, and continued on his way.

The block down which he'd been traveling ended at a sweeping flight of stone stairs, which led upwards to what looked like the fair he'd seen advertised earlier. There were stalls selling sausages and spun sugar and ice cream, and shooting galleries and ring-tosses and souvenir stands, but it was the stage at the very entrance to the fair that caught Booker's attention.

A man dressed in the garb of a street magician stood on a raised, colorfully-painted platform behind two costumed demons, shouting about something called 'vigors'. Booker had seen them advertised around the city and had just assumed they were fancy themed liquors, but this did not turn out to be the case. When one of the demons flicked his hands and tossed his compatriot several feet straight into the air, the gathered crowd _ooh_ed appreciatively, but Booker's thoughts ranged more along the lines of, "What the Hell?"

It was only when several of the fairgoers turned to look at him with faintly accusatory glares that he realized he'd spoken aloud.

"Not Hell, friend," the magician said, flourishing with his brass-knobbed cane, "merely science! The brightest minds of Columbia working together to bring the powers of the universe to the tips of your fingers!"

"Yeah, thanks for the sales pitch," Booker grumbled testily, to cover his embarrassment. "How do they work?"

"Why, quantum physics, of course!" cried the salesman, and launched into a prepared speech that Booker didn't understand and had little care to hear.

"Okay, thanks," he said, and turned and left before anyone else could try and sell him something.

This proved a futile endeavor. He found his way to a high brass gate guarded by an automaton which told him sternly that "Monument Island is closed! You'll _have_ to go!" as if it weren't just a tangle of clockwork and steam that he could happily dismantle given a wrench and a few spare minutes. He was trying to figure out whether this would be the most efficient means of getting past it when a female voice that sounded like it was trying just a little too hard to be sultry called out to him.

"You trying to get to the lottery, handsome?"

Booker turned around, blinking in surprise, and a lovely young woman stepped neatly in front of him before he could react. Her copper hair had been coiled upon her head in a crown of braids, but long strands of it had fallen (or been pulled free) to float artfully around her freckled face. She did not at all look the Columbian stereotype. In her arms, she held a basket of poison-green bottles topped with crimson hearts: another one of those vigor things, it looked like.

"So what does this one do?" Booker asked skeptically.

She laughed at him, sounding altogether too wicked and playful to belong in a city like hers. "Have you ever lost a penny to a vending machine? Have you ever yearned for more control over those who've paid you no mind?"

"I suppose, but in my experience control ain't found at the bottom of a green bottle."

She laughed again, mocking and merry. "Of course it is! It's Possession, silly!"

"And how does that help me get to Monument Island?"

She blinked up at him, swaying gently. Booker wanted to reach out and steady her before she fell over.

"Try it and see," the girl said. "No charge."

Well, maybe it would get rid of her. She was a pretty girl, but she wasn't the one he was being paid to find. At best, the vigor might actually do something, and of this Booker was rather optimistic; it wouldn't be the weirdest thing he'd seen that day by far. At worst, it would be wormwood and he'd end up several hours behind schedule, talking to the automaton, but even that wouldn't have been the strangest thing he'd've ever done(8).

"Yeah," said Booker, "all right, give it here."

He took a bottle from her basket and uncorked it cautiously. It had a bittersweet smell, though not of liquorice— oleander, perhaps, or primrose— and the bottle itself felt strange, somehow, as if it were vibrating slightly, though the liquid inside was unnaturally still.

Well, he'd drunk more dubious things before(9), and the young woman was staring at him expectantly, so Booker raised the bottle to his lips and took a cautious sip.

The entire world shattered.

He stood fixed in place while the entirety of his perception shook violently; he thought that years later he would still be able to say what those tremors tasted like. The gate before him flickered rapidly between open and shut, and the young woman's outlines shimmered and blurred into a mess of pulsing emerald tentacles that made him sick to look at.

"With just a whisper," she said, and her voice crawled and shone and grew like ivy, and her words fluttered from her mouth like rose-petal butterflies, "they're all— _yours_—"

And then, just as suddenly as it had dissolved, the world snapped itself back into focus. Booker doubled over, coughing violently. When he straightened up, head spinning, there was blood on his lips and on the tips of his fingers.

"_The Hell was that?_" he demanded, rounding on the girl, but she didn't even flinch. Still with that vague, heavy-eyed smile, she gestured mutely towards the gate.

It shuddered grainy-gray at the edges of his vision. Booker thought that if he could just _push_, just so, the distortion might swing aside...

He stretched out his hand as if to do just that, and to his utter bewilderment, the universe righted itself. The automaton bowed and clattered and waved and called him by somebody else's name, and the gate swung open as if he'd had the key.

A rather strangled, appreciative "_Shit_" was all Booker could manage for nigh on a minute, much to the girl's giggling amusement; then he rallied himself, gave her a respectful nod, and headed through the gate.

Where he nearly collided with a pair of tall, red-haired figures who were standing directly in his path.

"Heads?"

"—Or tails?"

"God _damn_ it," Booker said.

"Heads?" the sister Lutece said again, somewhat more insistently.

"Or tails?" The brother Lutece's tone had a decidedly threatening tone to it. Booker groaned aloud. What the Hell were these two doing here? And how had they even gotten here? Hadn't they left him at the—

Booker's alarmed, rapid internal monologue was cut short by the brother Lutece, who was wearing some sort of scoreboard and looking entirely disgruntled, all but hurling a silver coin at his face. He fielded it hastily and gave the twins a blank stare.

"Heads—"

"—_Or tails._"

Booker sighed. It was obvious they were not going to let him pass until he played along.

"Heads," he said helplessly, and flicked the coin into the air. It landed on the sister's tray with a clang, spun for a moment, and clattered to a halt.

Heads. The sister procured a piece of chalk and made a tally on her brother's scoreboard. Booker stared at it. There were hundreds of marks under the label '_heads_', and none at all under '_tails_'.

"Told you," the brother said mournfully. "I never find that as satisfying as I'd imagined."

"Oh, chin up." The sister patted his cheek as if he were a small child. "There's always next time."

And with that, they turned around and walked away.

Booker followed them around the corner only to find that they had vanished entirely. There were no doors into which they could have ducked, and the street was open and free of hiding places; and anyways, he sort of doubted they were hiding in a trash can.

"Huh," he said, because there really wasn't anything else for him to say, and resumed his journey towards the tower.

It was almost directly above him now, blotting out the sun that had, over the course of his trek through the city, climbed almost to its zenith. From this angle, the massive statue seemed crowned by rays of light, but her face was pooled in shadow. To Booker, her expression still seemed incredibly sad.

_No wonder, _he thought dryly. He'd be sad too, if he'd been forced to grow up alone inside a giant angel with the expectations of an entire city-state resting on his shoulders.

God, now he was becoming a sentimentalist. The sooner he got the girl out of here, the better.

Of course, he had to get there first. He'd been following signs for over an hour and had yet to find a way to the island. Sighing, he paused to assess his surroundings.

He stood in an open square at the very edge of the island, close to the statue. Clusters of houses and brownstones and promenades bobbed about in the near distance, regularly lit by showers of fireworks. In the distance, a choir was singing. To his left, yet another sign pointed him in the direction of Monument Island, but it too had a pasted amendment announcing that the tower had been closed down.

He'd just have to make peace with the idea of asking for directions, then.

Booker headed off in the direction of the singing. Singing meant people, and people meant maybe there'd be someone he could ask. Since he'd left the fair he'd seen almost no-one, let alone anybody who looked like they were going to tell him anything useful10. There was another sign up ahead, though, in the style of the Monument Island posters, and it didn't have a pasted notice over it.

_Finally_, Booker thought. _Maybe I'll get some answers._

It is, of course, the principle of dramatic irony at work here. It was apparent from the moment Booker came within reading distance that this sign had no answers for him, for all it depicted was a hand, wreathed in flames.

_You shall know the False Shepherd by his mark__, _it said.

The back of the demonic hand read simply, _A.D._

Booker stared at it."What."

When the sign, being a sign, failed to respond, he spoke again, more urgently. "What the hell is going on?"

No answers were forthcoming. The back of his hand burned as if it had been dipped in fire. Booker clawed at it until the thick, jagged letters were pink and stinging, but both his brand and that of the poster remained stubbornly in place.

For the first time, Booker found himself wondering if the Prophet might know something after all.

_No way, _he told himself sternly. _All that stuff is bullshit. This must be Samuels's doing, but why? What's his game?_

If it were, there would be only two people with the answers he sought: Comstock and Samuels. If Comstock thought he was this False Shepherd, there was going to be no way Booker could peaceably parlay with the man, so that left Samuels. His job now had a time limit. He hurried past the sign with a greater haste to his steps, hoping to find a way to the island before some other complication arose.

Of course, as we all know, this is not how it works. As Booker rounded the corner, past a pair of olive-suited policemen chattering excitedly over some sort of hooked contraption, he was hailed yet again by a strange woman's voice.

"Hey, mister! Over here! Mister!"

He turned. At the bottom of a sloping path was a mass of people, bouncing and cheering with the frenetic excitement of fairday crowds everywhere. Above them was a stage, upon which stood a man bearing a top hat, a heavy felt coat, and an impressive handlebar moustache. He was shouting to the crowd in a boisterous, joking voice; they were shouting back at him just as energetically, demanding that he stop stalling and start the raffle. Directly below him stood a young woman with a basket. It was she who had called him, and when she saw that he was looking her way, she bounced on the balls of her feet and waved at him frantically.

Booker approached her cautiously. She looked very much like the vigor saleswoman, all wide blue eyes and freckled nose and breathy laugh. _What do they do_, he wondered in amused bafflement, _send out a batch order for these girls or something?_

"Mister, wouldn't you like a ball?" The young lady gestured to the contents of her basket. It was filled with baseballs; Booker could see bright red numbers painted on some of them.

"Sorry," he told her. "No sale."

She laughed at him, sounding exactly like the Possession girl. It was sort of uncanny, actually. "There's never a charge for the raffle, silly! You been sleeping under a rock?"

Booker sighed. "If I take one, will you tell me how I can get to Monument Island?"

She winked at him. "It'll be our little secret."

Well, at least _someone _in this city was capable of being helpful(10). Booker decided he rather liked this girl. Giving her a rare genuine smile, he reached down, picked the top baseball up from the pile and turned it over.

_77 _was emblazoned upon its face in bright red paint. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck. '_Whatever you do, do not pick #77..._'

"Seventy-seven, that's a lucky number. I'll be rooting for you," the raffle girl purred at him, and slipped off into the crowd.

"Ladies and gentlemen," shouted the mustachioed man on the stage, as if on cue11, "the 1912 Raffle has officially begun! Bring me the bowl!" A cheer went up as the young woman reappeared beside him, having traded her basket of baseballs for a huge clear glass bowl full of slips of paper. The announcer gestured to her grandly, and she gave the crowd a deep curtsey.

"Is that not the prettiest white girl in all of Columbia?"

More cheers. With a dramatic flourish, the man reached into the bowl and swirled his hand around for a moment, before coming up with a scrap of paper between his forefingers. He made a great show of reading it while the crowd around Booker urged him to hurry up, and then cried out—

"The winner is... _Number seventy-seven_!"

"Well, what d'you know," Booker muttered with a dry smile. So much for Lutece's apparent clairvoyance.

"Number seventy-seven, come and claim your prize!" The man on the stage shouted. "_First throw_."

Something in the man's tone of voice gave Booker pause. "Wh—"

Behind the man, the stage curtains were being swept aside. Behind them was a setup of colorful plyboard flats, painted with leaves and leering monkeys. Between the flats were tied two people in tattered rags: a fair-haired man, deathly pale except for several large, ugly green-purple bruises, and a young black woman with a deep, vivid gash across one cheek. They were struggling valiantly against their bonds, and the man was pleading desperately to the stage announcer, begging him to let her go, that it was all is fault, that he'd take any punishment if only she could go free.

The announcer paid him no mind. "Well?" he said to Booker, and there was something mocking, taunting in his voice that raked up Booker's spine and made his fists clench in anger and disgust. "Are you going to throw it, or are you taking your coffee _black _these days?"

There was a round of nasty laughter from the crowd.

"_Please_," sobbed the man on the stage. Booker met his eyes only briefly, but his decision had already been made; if the man had been silent and stoic it would have changed nothing.

He raised his arm, to the expectant hush of the crowd, and hurled the baseball at the announcer's face.

Or he would have, if a policeman had not seen what he was trying to do and grabbed his wrist. There was a long silence.

Then the policeman shouted, "_He's the False Shepherd!_", and all hell broke loose.

The crowd screamed and scattered, people shoving desperately at each other in an effort to get away. Another officer appeared out of the chaos and grabbed Booker by the shoulders. This one had one of the hook-blade devices, and it whirred to life as he came near, swinging straight for Booker's face.

Booker moved. He wrenched his right arm free of the officer holding it and flung the baseball he'd not gotten the chance to throw straight up into the air. Both policemen jumped and looked up at it, startled. Before they could recover themselves, Booker grabbed the first officer by the hair and the second by his hook-blade and, without even thinking about what he was doing, shoved the former's face straight into the spinning blades.

Booker would have liked to say that he'd forgotten what it was like to kill someone up close, with his hands. He'd have loved to be able to say that he'd been so disgusted with himself that he'd forced the memories away.

But Anna was gone, and he'd broken the promise on the back of his hand years ago, and there was a wet, viscous _crunch _and blood and flesh and chips of bone and other, wetter things that Booker didn't want to contemplate went flying everywhere, and when he shoved the living officer away from him with shaking hands, he realized he remembered all too well, and was not burdened by remembering.

The other officer came at him again, swinging wildly with his nightstick, but Booker had parted him from his hook-blade when he'd shoved him away, and now he slid it onto his own arm and parried hurriedly before the club came down.

The officer bounced away, shouting curses, and charged him again.

Booker clenched his fist inside the device, and the hooks whirred to life, and he brought it down straight between the officer's eyes.

The man stumbled backwards and collapsed, less about half of his head; Booker staggered in the other direction, gasping, arms and face sticky with blood. He scrubbed at it with the back of his free hand, leaving dark red-black smears across his skin, obscuring his scars.

When he looked up again, the raffle square was completely deserted. He glanced to the stage in time to see two figures vanish behind the backdrop.

Good. At the very least, their escape would be a kick in the balls to all the people who'd been all set to happily stone them to death on a public stage.

Now all that was left was to get the girl and get out of here before the entire city knew his identity.

Booker turned and fled the other way, heading for Monument Island with all the speed he could muster.

* * *

7. That wasn't to say he hadn't enjoyed himself at the time, but he'd still been on the job; and while Booker would be the first person to agree that it wasn't a worthwhile venture unless you regretted _something _about it, this particular endeavor had left him with a bit more guilt than he really would've liked.

8. I'm not sure I want to know what he means by that.

9. I'm _certain _I don't want to know what he means by _that_.

10. That thought had a very pointed air to it. I'm sure I don't know what he means.  
...Really, though, there is no call for him to be so rude! We're merely doing our jobs as omniscient narrators, you know. What sort of Trickster Mentors would we be if we gave him clear and useful advice? _Honestly_!


	4. The Girl Who Kicked the Songbird's Nest

_AN: Oh man, frickin **finally**! I am SO SORRY this chapter took so long. It started out being 12,000 words – almost as long as the previous three chapters combined! I probably should've just cut it into two or even three chapters, but I'm loath to delay the AU much more and we're already looking at 21 chapters. So... this is going to be a novel. I hope you're up for it. It seems like you are, which brings me to the next point:_

_Thank you so, **so freaking much **to everyone who faved, followed, and/or reviewed! This is the most response I've ever gotten to any of my online writing, and you guys are so totally great! WOW I FEEL SO LOVED ;3;_

_One question for you guys, re: the footnotes. Reader response to the content has been overwhelmingly positive, but there's some contention as to the format. Several people prefer them at the bottom of their respective paragraphs, rather than between section breaks; several prefer them at the bottom, so they can reopen the story in a new tab, keep it scrolled down, and just tab between them whenever there is one. Let me know which of these you'd prefer, if you've got a different idea, or if you'd rather I just leave them out entirely. _  
_(For this chapter, I'll leave them at the bottom for tab viewing, so that I don't go crazy trying to format them and end up with orphaned footnotes floating around like I did last chapter. Sorry about that, by the way.)_

_And, last but certainly not least, thanks a million to my wonderful beta **proserpinasacra**, without whom this would be a rambling, incomprehensible monstrosity rather than the coherent story it is._

* * *

_"When we lose the right to be different,  
__we lose the privilege to be free."  
_—Charles Evans Hughes

**CHAPTER FOUR:** The Girl Who Kicked the Songbird's Nest.

"But Madame Lutece—"

"That's enough out of you, child. The Prophet doesn't want you reading, and I quote, 'things of such an inflammatory nature.' He's afraid you'll start to get ideas."

Elizabeth made a truly pathetic noise and threw herself backwards onto her bed. "But _Madame_, I haven't even gotten to the uprising yet, it's only just about to begin!"

"Yes, and that's why the Prophet has instructed me to take the book from you now," Rosalind said, not unkindly. "He seems to be under the impression that you'll try to start a rebellion yourself as soon as you read another page."

Pouting, Elizabeth sat up and hurled the book at the wall, where it made a large and visible dent.

Rosalind smiled at that. "He's not going to be happy about that," she said.

"Good," said Elizabeth petulantly. "You will tell him, won't you?"

"I shall, if that's what you wish."

"What I wish is that I could keep my book! Now I'll never know what happens, and Marius and Éponine really must run off together, and— oh, Rosalind, couldn't you let me keep it for just one more day?" She fluttered her eyelashes at the red-headed woman hopefully, but as usual, her entreaties had no effect whatsoever. Madame Lutece gave her a stern look.

"And risk the wrath of your dear guardian? My, but we are daring today."

Elizabeth's face fell and her shoulders drooped. "He... he would be angry with me for disobeying, wouldn't he?"

"He's very sensitive, for a piece of automata," agreed Madame Lutece, patting Elizabeth's shoulder. "Now, if you please." She held out a hand.

Sighing dramatically, Elizabeth slipped down off the bed, padded over, and retrieved her now rather battered copy of _Les Misérables_. Madame Lutece took it briskly, and then relented.

"I do believe I've misplaced your lessons for today," she said, sounding sly. "If you hurry while I go to fetch them, you might have time to read the last few pages and not tell me about it."

Elizabeth gave her a watery smile. It looked as if she were trying very hard not to cry. "That's very kind, but I just couldn't. I doubt I'd know what was happening anyways, what with how longit is, and Rosalind, _what if someone dies_!"

Now Madame Lutece looked as if she were trying to keep a straight face. "That is a possibility, yes."

Elizabeth took one look and saw right through her. "Oh, now I _have_ to know! Give it here!" She snatched the book back from Rosalind's hand, threw herself down on the bed again, and began flipping to the end as quickly as she could.

Chuckling quietly to herself, Rosalind Lutece turned and headed out to fetch her bag.

* * *

_Never gamble with a Sicilian, and never get into a land war in Columbia_, Booker thought, with a bitter sort of amusement, as he yanked the end of the gauze tight and pulled his sleeve back down over his newest bullet wound.

He was sitting half-obscured within a rosebush directly beneath a very frustrated military automaton, which was swiveling this way and that, bells ringing, as it searched desperately for his hiding place. It shivered and fuzzed with that painful green aura, and every few seconds it would shudder, grainy-gray, and go silent, the lights of its eyes flicking from orange to green, but Booker didn't have the energy to push it around into its friendly state at the moment. He'd learned to use the effects of the rather unsettling Possession vigor to his advantage very quickly, and had even faster become exhausted by its use. His head ached every time he used it, and if he did so too often, blood began to drip sluggishly from his mouth and nose.

A sudden whirr overhead alerted him to the latest wave of officers, using their hooks to sail down from parts unknown along the dozens of steel cargo lines that connected the islands of Columbia. Booker scrunched himself down further inside the rosebush as the officers fanned out, shouting to each other as they searched for him. He peered out through the branches, assessing the situation momentarily. Only one of them wielded a gun; the others had only nightsticks and sky-hooks. That made the man with the firearm his priority, but said officer was currently on the other side of the courtyard, kicking open the door to a small shop, which had been barricaded from the inside when the fighting began. There were shouts from inside, and a woman's voice, and Booker heard the officer apologizing; then he moved on to try the next door.

Booker rolled over onto his knees and laid a hand on the cool metal of the automaton's base. It didn't feel him, being a hunk of metal, but it buzzed and scratched at his skin, and he thought that he might have enough energy after all. He _pushed_, and the automaton vibrated and fizzed in and out of focus and then, suddenly, snapped back into reality, rang loudly, and began firing upon the Columbian officers.

The momentary chaos created by the automaton's sudden shift of allegiance gave him the time necessary to duck out of his hiding place and dart across the courtyard to crouch behind an abandoned ice cart. The policeman with the pistol saw him, but he'd been counting on it; as soon as the officer came to flush him out, he rolled from behind the cart, grabbed the man by his collar, yanked him down, and shot him in the back of the head.

One of the other policemen had escaped the automaton's immediate line of fire, and came at him, nightstick raised. Almost laughing at the pathetic level of dedication these men had— how many of them had he killed already today?— Booker shot him too.

There was a heavy _clunk _as the officer fell. Booker kicked the corner of the man's coat aside to see a large green-and-red Possession bottle and two small blue phials tucked into an inner pocket. He fished one of the phials out and looked at it curiously.

_Fink's Invigorating Salts_, it said, on the top of its label, and _For the Frequent Vigor User!_ along the bottom. He flipped it over. _Take as Needed to Reduce Vigor Fatigue. Warning: Overuse May Cause Jitters, Blurred Vision, and Multiple Realities._

Booker blinked at it, and then, following his imprudent habit of tasting things he probably shouldn't, raised the phial to his lips.

The liquid inside was bittersweet and oddly cold, and it made the world fuzz for a moment. Then his vision righted itself with a rush of sharp clarity. He felt as if he'd downed a canister of the sharp black coffee they'd been given in the army, but at least this stuff tasted better. Booker dropped the little bottle into his bag, stepped over the officer's corpse, and slunk quickly away down a winding side-street before more armed forces could arrive.

* * *

Songbird's eyes were orange when he came in, and Elizabeth knew that Madame Lutece had made good on her promise to tell the Prophet about her insolence.

"I'm sorry," she said, and Songbird glared at her, first out of one eye and then out of the other. He whistled sharply, accusatory. "I know," Elizabeth sighed. "I shouldn't have lost my temper. But why does he care so much about what I do? I've never even seen him, and he never comes to talk to me at all! Not like you do."

She reached up and laced her hands around one of Songbird's huge claws, smiling in conciliation. Flattery was the right choice, she knew immediately: with a faint _clunk _his eyes cycled back to green, and he reached down and obliged her entreaty to be picked up, wrapping his huge hands around her waist and tucking her into the gap between the plates of his shoulder and one huge canvas wing. The metal of his skin was cool, and though she'd grown a bit too big to fit comfortably, she could still curl up into the little notch where his neck met his shoulder and rest her cheek against his.

Her keeper whistled fondly and flexed his wings out, cradling her, and Elizabeth smiled sadly. He could be demanding and impatient, and he was very strict, but still, she supposed she loved him. He was her only friend, up here in her lonely chambers in the sky. Even Madame Lutece only came to her at the behest of the Prophet. She doubted anybody else knew she even existed at all.

* * *

"Shitshitshitshitshitshit_shit_—!"

Booker stumbled up the hill as fast as he could, panting curses, shoving barrels out of his way and ducking around corners at random. Behind him, the man in the terrible flaming machine roared and rattled and clanged in pursuit. Fire exploded around him and he barely managed to get clear, wedging himself between a gate and a wall and fumbling with the cartridges of his filched volcanic pistol. What he wouldn't give for his old Springfield...

But Booker had more pressing concerns, like the rapidly-approaching monster of a man, who, having lost sight of him, was now hurling clusters of embers into every hiding place he found. The resulting explosions were edged in grainy gray, and Booker wondered what sort of terrible mind had come up with such a vigor.

_Puts a whole new meaning to the word 'fireman', _he thought wryly(1), as he slotted the new cartridge into place.

Another shout and round of explosions signified the approach of the fireman around the corner. Booker gritted his teeth against the mounting pain in his arm, took a breath, and darted out from his hiding place.

"False Shepherd—!" the fireman bellowed, rounding on him, and Booker flung out a hand and the fireman shuddered and jerked and stopped.

Gasping, Booker sank down onto a crate and ran a hand through his hair. The more he used the vigor, the shorter it lasted— but the ones he'd fired in the beginning were still working, and he thought that maybe he might have a plan after all.

He staggered to his feet and headed up the hill, praying that his old friend the automaton turret was still on his side.

To his utter relief, it was. The fireman loped amiably up the street after him, but halfway along the block jerked to a stop and once again shuddered violently. The haze surrounding him fizzled away, and the engines somewhere within his terrible suit roared to life again—

And the automaton came alive as well, spraying bullets across the courtyard. The fireman shouted and tried to lumber into cover, but while Booker, though tall, was at least human-sized, there was nowhere big enough to accommodate the monstrosity's flaming bulk.

There was a high-pitched mechanical whine, and then the fireman exploded.

Debris, shrapnel, and embers rained everywhere. Booker threw his arms up over his head just in time; glowing coals pattered down around him, striking his skin in a bright painful shower before rolling onto the ground and fading out.

Mildly burned, but otherwise alive, Booker got stiffly to his feet and looked around. The only evidence of his inflammatory foe was a large scorch mark on the cobblestones, several scattered, smoking chunks of metal, and, sitting in the gutter a dozen feet away, the red-orange bottle of a vigor.

He went over to it, picked it up, and turned it over in his hands. A horned, tailed woman blew a kiss of flame from her position atop the cork, and the bottle was labeled in crimson ink.

"'Devil's Kiss'..." he read. "Well, you only live once(7)."

The vigor was spicy-sweet like cinnamon, cloyingly thick, and warm. For a moment nothing happened, and Booker felt a swell of disappointment. Then red spots exploded across his vision, and through the staticky haze his shuddering hands peeled and blistered, the skin sloughing off to show bone beneath. Carving Anna's memory into his hand had not burned so fiercely; but before he could cry out, the pain had ceased, leaving him shaking, sweating, and entirely unharmed.

_What asshole thought _that_ was a good idea? _Booker didn't really understand how the vigors worked, but it seemed to him there had to be a better way than intense hallucination to indicate that they had. He ran a hand through his hair, shook his head, and walked stiffly to the end of the street. There, he leaned against the brass gate for a moment to catch his breath, staring out over the sea of clouds.

Fireworks still sparkled in the air over some of the other islands every few dozen seconds, and distant music drifted on the breeze; it appeared word of the False Shepherd's coming had not yet reached the entire city. That was a small blessing, at least: it was difficult enough to get close to Monument Island _without _the entire city on the lookout for him.

He still had to figure out a way around this latest roadblock the end of the street presented, though. The fact that he'd reached a point where his island appeared to be constructed to dock with another was a good sign, but the board with all the docking times of all the other islands it connected to had been yet again pasted over.

_Monument Island, 12:00 - 1:00. Closed by Order of the Prophet._

Below that, though, was a subscript that had not been present on the other signs. Booker peered at it more closely. "'To visit the Island outside of standard docking hours, or for a special event, please consult the Monument Island Railway for further debarkation times'," he read aloud. "Huh."

Straightening up, he shaded his eyes and squinted up at the tower. If he looked closely, he could just catch the glint of swooping steel rails, connecting the tower physically to several other islands. Most dipped down into the cloud layer and were lost, but one arched towards his own island to disappear behind a restaurant to come to rest not too far away.

"_Finally_," he said, half-laughing with relief. Any longer, and he'd've had mind to just give up the whole endeavor, toss New York, and deal with whatever Hell Samuels sent after him on his own terms. It might yet come to that still, but at least now he had a definite lead.

A throb from his wounded arm reminded him that he still had matters more pressing than even the job at hand. At best, the restaurant might have a stash of medical supplies; at worst, there would be gin and linen. He'd been in the army; if he couldn't scrap up a working bandage on the fly, he'd have been dead amongst the cactus a decade ago.

Pistol at the ready, Booker edged open the restaurant door, peered inside, and seriously considered shooting the occupants just on principle(8).

"We have company."

"We do indeed."

"What are— whyare you following me?"

"_We _were already here."

"Why are _you _following _us_?"

Booker lowered his pistol and gave a weary sigh. The sister smiled serenely at him. He did his utmost to ignore her, but he could feel her eyes on his back as he skirted between the tables and bumped open a door marked '_Employees Only_'. The room beyond was small, with a deep basin, several spare wait uniforms, piles of clean linens, aprons, and dishtowels, and, blessedly, a small medical kit tucked under the sink. Above that was the same painting of Comstock's Lady, the one of her in the dark blue walking gown.

Booker looked up at her with a degree of calm that surprised him. "So _now_ you're gonna follow me around, huh? Should've stayed gone, for all the good it did you."

"You know," the brother said casually from beyond the open door, "talking to paintings is a definite sign of madness."

"Thanks for the tip," Booker grumbled back. He snatched the canvas pouch up from under the sink and left the little room as quickly as he could.

Both twins were giving him odd looks when he emerged. Still pointedly ignoring them, he settled himself on a bar stool, rolled up his sleeve, and then, gritting his teeth, yanked the gauze off of his arm.

The wound was shallow, and the bullet had missed the bone, but that was only a small mercy. Bandages pilfered from a kicked-over vending machine, no antiseptic, and several hours' worth of running and fighting had not done him any favors. The puncture was raw, half scabbed, and sluggishly oozing blood; the skin around it was reddish-purple, swollen, and hot, and it _hurt_.

"God _damn _it." Booker had dealt with field infections before, and it was not an experience he cared to repeat.

The Twins exchanged glances. "We have just the thing," the sister said.

Booker glared bloody murder at them. As usual, they remained perfectly unfazed.

There was a moment of awkward silence. Booker was beginning to get the impression that this would be a common occurrence whenever he dealt with them.

"...Well?"

The brother reached under the counter and came up with a yellow bottle, not unlike the sort the vigors came in.

"Be careful," the sister said. "It can sting a bit."

Booker rolled his eyes and reached for the bottle, but the brother pulled it back with an odd expression of perplexed curiosity upon his face. "What's that you've got for me in that satchel of yours?"

He stared at the other man in mild disbelief. "You want me to pay you, you're gonna have to do better than that."

"Fine. I shan't fix that device you have for you, and you'll never find out what your dearly departed lady friend had to say."

Booker blinked at him, entirely taken aback. "What, the— the gramophone thing?"

"That's the one. It's called a voxophone, by the way, though the distinction is nominal."

"Uh, sure. Take it." He dug into his bag and pulled out the device. It looked battered beyond repair. The brother, though, seemed to disagree; he took it in both hands and began studiously pulling it apart, so Booker returned his attention to the bottle he'd been given. It was full of a sickly yellow liquid that did not shimmer, fuzz, or fade in and out of existence. In fact, besides its decidedly unappealing color, it looked perfectly normal.

He really shouldn't have felt as disappointed by that as he did.

Shrugging, he uncorked the tonic.

Really, he should have expected by then that anything he ingested, no matter its appearance, was not going to be normal. Everything blacked out, and there was the sensation of being slowly squeezed, and when his vision returned there was a strange sheen a quarter-inch above his skin, and the bullet wound was entirely healed. The only indication that he'd been shot at all was a scar across his upper arm, so pale and faded he'd've thought it had been there for years.

"What the Hell was that?" It felt like he'd been asking that question a lot.

The brother looked up from his intent dismantling of the voxophone. "Hm. Surprising."

The sister's response sounded the tiniest bit smug. "Surprising that it worked?"

"Surprising that it didn't kill him."

"A magnetic-repulsion field around one's body can come in handy."

"_If_ it doesn't kill you."

"Would you just," Booker said helplessly, and gave up.

The brother finished threading the shiny black tape into the voxophone and slotted the grooved disc into place.

"Here."

Booker took it dubiously. "Thanks."

"Mm. If I were you, I'd consider carefully before listening to it."

"The word of a disciple can be distressing indeed," the sister agreed. "Particularly when one was acquainted with said disciple before a certain Prophet got his hands on her, in both the metaphorical and the literal sense."

"You'd best be on your way if you don't want him to get his hands on you as well," said the brother, "and I do doubt he'll be as gentle as he was to your dear—"

"Don't," Booker said, and there must have been something in the tone of his voice that brooked no disagreement, because for once the Twins did as he said.

"The point remains," the sister said after a moment. "If you want to get your job done, you'd best be on your way."

"You'll find no argument from me," Booker muttered, shooting her a pointed glance. He stood up stiffly from the barstool and brushed past her, into the back storeroom of the restaurant.

"Good luck," the brother called after him, and perhaps he was going crazy, but there was something decidedly sinister about the cant of those parting words.

* * *

They were waiting for him when he left the restaurant.

Booker ducked out of the storeroom and came out onto a docking bay at the very edge of the island. Through the slats beneath his feet, he could see clouds, and, a long, long way below them, a flash of green that disappeared as quickly as it had come. Swallowing his vertigo, he stepped out onto the platform and looked around. There was another island about a hundred yards distant, and this appeared to be the one to which the shipping rails led.

How he was going to get there, however, was another matter entirely. There were no rails connecting the two islands. Booker frowned and scouted along the edge of the dock, hoping for some indication as to what he was supposed to do next.

Much to his surprise, his search was successful. There was an arrow painted on the wall, pointing upwards. Following it with his gaze, Booker saw a curved hook dangling from the end of a scaffold that protruded from the wall. From it hung a white tin sign: '_Skyhook connection point_'. Doubtful, he regarded it for a moment, looked down at the hook-and-bracer contraption, and then back up at the freight hook again. It looked fairly sturdy, but it was a good twenty feet in the air. There was no way he was jumping to it; maybe he could climb up onto those crates...

Irritated, he clenched and unclenched his fingers inside the bracer. The hooks whirred to life only briefly, but in the instant that they did so, there was a sharp tug on the device, and Booker found himself drawn towards the freight hook a good foot and a half.

Experimentally, he tightened his hand again. There was a moment's delay; then, as soon as the blades had got up to speed, he was jerked roughly into the air. The force with which he connected to the freight hook threw his hand open and ought to have dislocated his wrist at the very optimistic least, but the padded bracer clamped down on his arm and took a good deal of his weight.

Booker hung for a moment, bewildered, and then tucked his free arm through the iron lacings of the scaffold, braced his legs against the wall, and disengaged the sky-hook from its slot. Gingerly he adjusted his hands until he was sure that he wouldn't get caught if he let go, and looked out, searching for another anchor.

He found one about fifty yards away, floating on a solitary striped balloon halfway between him and his destination. It was a long jump and a further fall, but there was another arrow on the side of the little tower, pointing him in its direction. It was follow it or give up, and though he wasn't looking forward to the former, he certainly wasn't about to do the latter.

_What I'll do to see a job done, _he thought sourly. Samuels and the other Pinks would be having such a laugh if they could see him now.

Well, if he died, he wouldn't have to deal with them anymore; if he didn't, he'd be that much closer to being done and gone. He hauled himself up to the top of the scaffold, crouched there for a moment, and then flicked the sky-hook to life and jumped.

For one terrifying moment, the cold green-and-gray void rushed beneath his feet and he felt certain he was going to fall, but then there was a violent jolt that knocked all the air from him, accompanied by a loud _clang_, and he swung to a halt, hanging securely from the little floating tower.

He dangled briefly, catching his breath; then he pulled himself up to the top of the scaffold, found the next arrow, and jumped again. This hook was attached to the side of a free-floating two-story building only a few yards from the edge of the island, and beneath it was a dock much like the one from which he had departed.

Booker was about to swing out and jump down onto the main island when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. There were people milling about the alley there, men and a few women in pale blue uniforms. They were calling out to each other as they paced— things like, "He was last seen in this area!" and, "Do you see anything?" and "Goddamned False Shepherd" and "I can't wait until we have his head!" Several had pistols; most carried Hotchkiss M1909s. _That _was going to be a problem, Booker thought sourly. Before they could catch sight of him, he unhooked himself from the scaffold and dropped lightly down behind the crates stacked around the edge of the little loading dock. Beside him was a heavy iron furnace, stacked round with barrels of coal, and it and several of the crates around it jittered red and grainy at the edges. The furnace vacillated between cold and dark, and full of burning embers, while the crates opened and shut erratically. He _hmm_ed and looked at his hand, which glowed and shuddered in the same way. A peek into one of the unstable crates revealed stacks of jars, and when he reached for one, it righted itself into stability and he picked it up.

The liquid inside was clear, thick, and oily, and Booker nearly dropped it. He was very, very glad he hadn't, but he smiled grimly at the notion. Stepping gingerly up onto one of the crates, he took stock of the patrolling soldiers, glanced back down at the little jar, and threw it as hard as he could.

There was no fire, as there had been with the vigor's previous owner. There was just a soft sort of _thwump _and a huge billow of oily black smoke. Crates, shrapnel, debris, and bits of soldier erupted everywhere. Immediately there was a round of shouts, and a little boat-like flying machine rose up from the tangle of rooftops, bells ringing. Booker hurled another jar of nitroglycerin and pushed the furnace into reality, and coals sprayed out over the docks, igniting everything in their path. The turret automaton atop the flying machine exploded when the jar hit it, and this time there was fire aplenty as the little flying machine went down, alarum bells ringing frantically, its crew screaming as the flames swept over them.

Booker vaulted down onto the island, ducked down a flight of stairs, and skidded to a halt as another pair of soldiers appeared from under an iron railing. The first lost his head to the skyhook; Booker flung out his open hand and the second got a faceful of hot coals and tumbled backwards, clutching his burning face and shrieking. Booker silenced the man, bent down, and retrieved his fallen Hotchkiss, hefting it appreciatively. He'd never gotten a chance to use such a machine gun, but he'd been pitted against one before, and knew what a formidable weapon it would be. He rooted through the nearby crates for a moment, searching for ammo, and came up with several coiled magazines, a large bottle of vigor salts, and a handful of silver coins.

Satisfied, he piled his spoils into his bag, took one last furtive look around, hopped over a wooden sawhorse painted with the words '_Do Not Cross!_', and headed out to explore the new island. The area he was in was predominantly residential and evidently very wealthy, all huge pale townhouses and planters overflowing with roses and hydrangeas. There was nobody around, to his utter lack of surprise; everyone had run inside, shuttered their windows and barred their doors when the docks behind their homes had begun exploding.

His path towards the railway led him to a massive mansion on a hill, its gates emblazoned with a spiked eye. There was no way around, so once again he found himself trespassing in someone else's house. The enormous and reverent statue of John Wilkes Booth in the center of the foyer made him feel significantly less guilty about doing so, as did the large number of hooded men that attacked him as soon as he made it to the upper level. He battered his way cheerfully through the huge house, leaving a trail of blue-robed, smoldering bodies in his wake. He was getting the hang of these vigor things, he thought, though he really needed to make better time: by the time he had reached the other end of the zealot house, he could look out the windows to see the sun falling low in the sky, far off over the edge of the world.

Booker pushed open one last door and then reeled back as hundreds upon hundreds of huge black birds exploded out at him, shrieking and cawing. Then they were gone, vanishing into thin air as quickly as they'd come. The hall fuzzed briefly about the edges as they disappeared. Booker stared blankly at the empty space into which they'd flown for a moment longer, and then returned his attention to the room beyond the door.

It was a greenhouse, full of twisting, stunted cypress trees hung with gold birdcages. The contents of the cages didn't look like birds, and the pale waxy spindly thing that looked suspiciously like half a hand discouraged him from investigating more closely. In the center of the room was a statue of the Lady, kneeling, her hands clasped, her blank marble eyes turned upwards towards the glass-bubbled sky. Below her, chained in cruciform between two trees, was the remnants of a man. The ugly stabs and lacerations that peppered every inch of his skin seemed a good indication as to what the rush of birds had been doing before Booker had opened the door. One of his eyes was missing; the other hung from its socket by a veiny thread. The air was full of the sound of wings.

He proceeded forwards cautiously, gripping the crank of the Hotchkiss a good deal more tightly than was strictly necessary. The flutterings intensified. A sudden shout made him start, and he spun around in time to fling coals at a vague and shadowy form that had appeared directly behind him.

But the embers sailed straight through the black haze and fizzled out on the damp grass. A moment later, another flock of birds rushed down out of thin air and coalesced into a man, hooded like the others and carrying a plated club. This time Booker was fast enough, and his avian assailant was rewarded with a shower of sticky fire. Shouting obscenities, he exploded into birds again before Booker could take a shot at him.

Never one to be deterred by the impossible, Booker began methodically scattering ash and ember throughout the grass. The next time the flock of birds appeared, the man they congealed into tripped straight into a clump of coals. His clothes ignited; he made no sound as he died, but simply dissolved into crows once more. The birds, though, shrieked with raucous panic as their feathers smoked and crumbled, until they too were nothing but cinders and, sitting on a wrought-iron table at the end of the greenhouse, a vigor, its bronze stopper in the fashion of a crow's head.

Booker picked it up. It tasted of burnt chocolate and was as cold as ice despite the heat of the greenhouse, and it filled the trees with birds. They were huge and jet-black, with pale beaks as sharp and broad as knives: rooks, then, or ravens, too big and vicious to be crows. The vigor hurled a stone into the flock and they rose in a massive cloud, storming and screaming bloody murder. They swirled around Booker in a demonic whirlwind, crowning him in glossy black and filling the air with the sound of their wings.

* * *

By the time Booker reached the Monument Island Railway, the sun had all but set, and he was exhausted. He'd fought his way more or less continuously from the House of Zealots all the way to the station, not that this was altogether terrible; he'd joined the army for a reason, and the Pinkertons for the same. But even a willing soldier has last legs, and he was coming close to his. It had been further than it looked to the Railway, nearly two miles— which was not far at all, but felt much farther when everyone he encountered was out to kill him. At one point he'd been forced to once again take refuge in someone's house, only to find its tenants eagerly describing him to a policeman, who was sketching the likeness out at an easel. It was a woefully inaccurate depiction, though closer to his appearance than the bulletins he'd been hearing; but before he could sneak back out the way he'd come, the woman had turned round, spotted him, and screamed. Her husband and the officer had been easy enough to get rid of— Booker was becoming very fond of his new corvid acquaintances— but they had left it up to him to deal with the woman. She had been crouched on all fours behind a table, but she had looked into his face at his approach with wide, tear-filled eyes.

His hand burned. _You promised I would be the last_, Anna's voice whispered in the back of his mind, sweetly, coldly, but he ignored it. He could feel guilty about the housewife's death when he and the girl were safely on a zeppelin back to New York. Right now, he just had to get there.

The automaton at the helm of the little gondola which sat at the station told him sternly that Monument Island was closed, and he'd have to leave before he was ticketed.

"I _know_," he grumbled, in the half-hearted hope that it would be capable of answering him, rather than just a dumb machine.

It wasn't, but its recorded message continued despite his interruption. "Workmen should proceed to the tower by means of the sky-line."

Booker looked up at the sweeping steel rails, and remembered the policemen all the way back at the raffle square, using their spinning hooks to sail along them through the air. Well, it was worth a shot. He brought the hooks to life experimentally, and when they pulled him forwards he took a running step and jumped up to the rail.

Instantly he was yanked forwards, the dock receding behind him at a dizzying speed. He tried not to think too hard about what would happen if the device broke, if it let go of his arm and left him hanging on his own three miles above the earth; but trying not to think about something is a notoriously good way to become relentlessly plagued by that thing, so Booker concentrated on the swiftly-nearing statue instead. This also turned out to be inadvisable; there was a round of gunfire below him and he jerked around to see the Tower's docks swarming with men, all firing up at him and shouting. Before he could get to his pistol, though, a ringing voice sounded out above them.

_"Stand down!"_

Immediately all the soldiers dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, hands clasped and heads bowed. Booker took a wild guess as to who the voice belonged to and groaned. Of _course. _It had been nothing short of naïve to think that he could actually get to the Tower without running into the Prophet himself, but he'd still hoped...

He let go of the skyhook's clamp, and the wheel clicked to a halt and slipped off the rail, dropping him to his feet in the midst of the soldiers. Not a single one looked up when he landed. They were all staring straight ahead at the cobbled ground, and many were deep in audible prayer. Booker saw one man's eyes flick to his fallen machine gun, but he did not move to pick it up. Their stillness was eerie.

Booker moved through the kneeling crowd towards the huge double doors that marked the entrance to Monument Island. They stood ajar, and he stepped through to find himself in the musty darkness of an elevator shaft. There were walkways every dozen feet or so, circling the shaft and crowded with soldiers, all on their knees and as still as statues. Booker wondered if the Prophet had intended for the effect to be as unnerving as it was.

The lift started moving as soon as he stepped up onto it, with such sudden speed that he nearly fell. There was a huge window high in the shaft, and through this Booker found himself staring into the Prophet's face. At first he thought it a recording, spilling onto canvas from unseen projector, but as he drew even with it, it spoke to him.

"I know why you've come, False Shepherd."

Booker scowled at him. "What do you want?"

Comstock laughed, the sound tinny and distorted, as if produced by something mechanical. "_Me_?What about _you_? You've come to take my lamb from me, and for what? To repay a debt?"

Booker liked the man's mocking tone even less than he liked the notion that the Prophet knew far too much about him. He refused to believe the man could actually see the future— somebody must have set him up. Delaney or his attack dog Clancy, or even Samuels, for whatever unfathomable reason.

But then: "I know every sin that blackens your name, _Booker_." He spat it like a curse. "Wounded Knee, the Pinkertons. The lies, the gambling, the debts. And how could I forget— _Anna_." This name he said like it was holy, and Booker had wanted to kill plenty of people before, but never so dearly as he did Comstock in that moment.

_I'll bet she hated you, _he thought, though he would not give the other man the satisfaction of speaking, and he managed to keep his face a mask of cold indifference. If the Prophet was disappointed with this lack of reaction, he gave no sign, or perhaps he merely saw straight through Booker's feeble façade.

As soon as the lift hissed to a halt, Booker was gone, down the hallway and out of the Prophet's painful stare. He did not look back, but that distorted voice shouted from behind him: "You've come to lead my lamb astray, but thy crook is bent and thy path is twisted! Go back to the Sodom from which you came!"

On the last word, the hallway exploded. Half the building tore away beneath him and he was flung free, away from the island and out into the bottomless sky.

For one horrible moment, Booker fell through empty space, with nothing around him to delay his rapidly-approaching reentry into the world below. Then his trajectory brought him past the airship that had been the source of the blast, and somehow he managed to reach out and catch hold of one of the tacking lines that lanced down about the wings. The rope held him for only a moment before snapping, sending him tumbling down onto the outer deck.

Bruised, but thankfully no closer to becoming intimately acquainted with the ground, Booker got to his feet. Aside from the projection of the Prophet still splashed across its balloon, the airship appeared deserted. He didn't think Comstock would be all that pleased if Booker stole his ship out from under him, but at this point anything that made the former the opposite of pleased was a good thing. He still needed a way home, after all, and it was quicker than swimming.

He hurried to the cabin before the soldiers below could retrieve their weapons and begin firing upon the airship, and there he found that it was not deserted after all. A woman in one of the white cassocks stood before a rack of candles, head bowed like all the rest. Booker ignored her in favor of the airship's controls, which were unlike anything he'd ever seen. He'd driven a motorcar before, and if he really stretched his imagination, there was that deal with the train(9), but this was nothing like either of those. He had just figured out which lever he thought was the throttle when a mechanical roar made him look up. The Prophet himself came soaring by on one of the little boat-shaped flying machines, and met Booker's eyes for just a fraction of a second.

"The Lord forgives everything," he said, "but I'm just a prophet— so I don't have to. _Amen_."

"Amen," said the woman in the white cassock, and set herself on fire.

For those who do not know the process by which an airship such as the one Booker was currently attempting to steal is constructed, let it be known that the average fixed-frame dirigible contains anywhere from one to two hundred million gallons of hydrogen. Let it also be known that hydrogen just so happens to be one of the most flammable natural gases of common occurrence in the world.

The resulting fireball made a few casually-tossed jars of nitroglycerin look like child's play. All the windows in the cabin exploded outwards, and the airship screeched and roared and tilted and began to descend very, very quickly. The wooden hull splintered with a great and terrible shattering sound, and then split apart entirely, its back broken and its body cleaved in two.

A flash of arching metal caught Booker's eye, and without even thinking about it he scrambled to his feet and flung himself from the burning airship.

The force with which he connected to the skyline knocked all the air from his lungs, and even with the padded bracer taking the brunt of the blow, there was an excruciating _crack_ that couldn't have been anything but his wrist breaking. But he was alive, and when he dropped, burned, bloody, and shaking, to the ground, he found himself standing at last before the great bronze angel of Monument Island.

She was so huge she blotted out the setting sun and a good three-quarters of the sky, and her base was swathed in floodlights and warning signs. Two huge padlocked gates stood between him and the entrance, but if Booker hadn't been able to get past a padlock, he would not have made it very far as a detective at all. Doing so with a broken wrist, though, was another story entirely, and he ended up using the last of his salts to melt the locks away rather than try and break or pick them. He'd stashed the skyhook and wrapped the joint tightly with a strip of linen, but it ached fiercely nonetheless, and was already turning a mottled yellow-purple.

For all the trouble he'd gone through to get here, this girl was going to have to really be something.

From all the trouble he'd gone through to get here, it seriously looked like she might.

The doors set into the base of the angel were made of heavy black iron, barred with a block of ancient wood. Rust and rot had warped the bar, and Booker had to ram it upwards with his shoulder to get it free; but the doors themselves swung inwards without a sound, and then he was inside.

The foyer of the Tower was entirely deserted and totally silent. In the center of the room was a miniature replica of the tower in gaily painted plaster, but it had been cordoned off by sawhorses painted with yellow-and-black warnings. Many of the lockers that lined the walls hung open, abandoned; most of the others had been rusted shut. Dust danced in the beams of dim sunlight and coated every surface in a thin but unbroken layer. Even the overturned chairs and the door that hung open from one hinge at the opposite end of the foyer had not been disturbed for a very long time. A faded sign in front of the angel informed Booker that there was a '_56 Hour Quarantine Beyond this Point, By Order of the Prophet._' A gas mask stared sullenly up at him from the floor with shattered eye sockets, and he kicked it over as he passed, sending up a puff of dust. The silence was absolute and unsettling. He pushed past the unhinged door, and then another, this one intact, which stood closed but unlocked at the end of a short hallway.

The room into which he emerged was huge, easily five stories tall, and it was entirely filled by some sort of machine. The thing was fluted, shaped like some obscene flower: wide and petalled at the base, with bulbous stamens of blown glass, the central stalk tapering up into a rounded copper-and-glass spire that stretched forty feet into the air. Lines of lightning spread out from a copper sphere at the top of the spire to strike long metal strips embedded in the walls, and with each round of energy the entire room vibrated. Set between the conductors and into the petals of the machine were massive trumpet speakers, and through these came the sound of someone singing. Each note caused the machine to spit lightning more energetically, and sparks showered down to peter out upon the flagstones. A blackboard mounted before the device charted '_Specimen Power Level_' before cutting off abruptly with a hasty '_Facility Unsafe!_' that had been scrawled across the numbers in bright red chalk, and a sawhorse at the head of the chamber warned Booker, '_72 Hour Quarantine Beyond This Point. Do NOT Approach the Siphon While Specimen is Being Drained._'

He had a feeling he knew who the 'Specimen' was.

"'Drained'," he repeated slowly, with a cold sort of horror. This was the Prophet's _kid_. What the Hell was the man doing to her? Taking the girl away from him was starting to seem a whole lot like a mercy.

He'd better get to her quickly, then. Very cautiously, Booker sidestepped around the huge machine, half-expecting to be struck by the lancing energy as soon as he drew near. But he made it unharmed to the other side, where a little round sidechamber opened out into three larger rooms. One looked like an operating chamber, with a chair in the center and sinister steel tools scattered about on the counters. There were iron restraints on the wrists and ankles of the chair. Booker left that room as quickly as he could.

The next was a darkroom, full of photographs hung out to dry. One he recognized as a larger print of the blurry picture of Elizabeth that he'd been given before he set out. The second showed her crouched in front of a door with two heavy locks: the first painted with a bird, the second with an empty cage. She was painting in another, though the easel was facing away and he could not see the subject. In the next, her bare back was to the camera as she stepped into a petticoat. Booker stared angrily up at the photographs. Not only were they watching her, which was questionable enough, but they were watching her _all the time_. That was a good deal too unsavory for his taste, so once again, he moved on.

The last room had only a lift and another wooden caution sign. '_128 Hour Quarantine Beyond this Point. Do NOT Speak to the Specimen. By Order of Chief Scientist Lutece._'

"'Chief scientist'—?" Well, that explained how the Prophet had known he was coming, at least. Those— those goddamned ginger _traitors!_ Of _course _it had been them.

Worry about that later, Booker told himself. You're almost done.

The lift took a very long time to reach its destination. It was not particularly slow— it was electrical rather than steam, the same sort they used to get to the aerodrome at the top of the Empire State Building— but nonetheless it took several minutes to come to a stop. He must be in the very top of the Tower, he thought.

The elevator let out into a little brass-lined room with a floor-to-ceiling panel in the opposite wall. There was a lever beside the panel, and a chair, and an old silvertype camera; painted onto the metal in yellow capitals were the words '_OBSERVATION ROOM A_', and set into the wall to its left was a heavy valve door.

Curious, Booker pulled the lever. The panel groaned and accordioned sideways to reveal what had to be a two-way mirror, because behind it, apparently completely unaware that she was being observed, was—

Was—

_No. Don't be an idiot, DeWitt, she's not her mother._

He stared straight into the young woman's face as she braided her hair in what she clearly did not know was a window into her bedroom. She looked younger than her seventeen years, but she carried herself with a grace that was distantly, achingly familiar. She was humming to herself, smiling slightly, and the longer he looked, the less she resembled the Lady who'd borne her. Even so, she had the same long, curly chocolate-black hair that spilled over her shoulders in glossy ringlets, the same pale blue eyes, same narrow shoulders, same _nose_— But her face was softer, rounder, her expression kinder. Her nose and cheeks were spattered with freckles. Her mother'd never had freckles...

Booker had to stop himself from slamming a fist against the glass._ Don't do this to yourself, DeWitt. This is Samuels's revenge, don't give him the satisfaction, don't do it...!_

Elizabeth finished tying off her plait with a blue silk ribbon and turned abruptly, darting out of the room and vanishing through an archway that led to somewhere Booker could not see. A small chime brought his attention back to reality, and to the valve door; a light had lit up on a sign beside it, which was labeled '_Specimen Location_' and told him that she had just entered the parlor. He spun the wheel of the door and it hissed open, revealing a railed walkway, tucked beneath the curving brass plates of the angel itself.

The walk swept upwards and around to another valve door, which he opened to find Elizabeth standing at her easel. It had been turned since the time of its photographing, and he could see that she had rendered Paris with loving care, the Eiffel Tower outlined in bright yellow paint. She was staring at the canvas thoughtfully, and at first he assumed she was not finished with it; then the painting rippled with that static-gray fuzz he'd come to associate with the vigors.

Elizabeth did not use a vigor. She reached out and hooked her fingers into the center of the distortion, and she _pulled_. The ripple flung itself open, and there, in her parlor at the top of the statue of the angel, was Paris. It shone with a thousand lights of evening, brighter than New York, as lovely as Columbia, and he could hear muffled music playing through the glass. Then there was a klaxon horn and some sort of automobile— not a car, it was far too large, and garish red— came barreling down the boulevard towards them. Elizabeth cried out in alarm and yanked at the edges of the hole in the air. For a moment nothing happened, and Booker feared she would be run down, but then there was a heavy shockwave and the rip slammed shut. The girl was thrown back against the mirror, and papers and scraps of canvas blew in a whirlwind around her. The painting was gone.

Looking severely disappointed, the girl turned and again left Booker's field of view, rubbing her shoulder where it had struck the glass. The chime indicated that she had moved on to the library; he followed the walkway around to the next door, but when he spun the wheel open, he found that it led not to another observation room, but to the exterior of the statue.

If the air had been cold in Columbia, it was frigid up here, a thousand feet higher, and the wind tore at him like to snatch him up and throw him out into the void. He stood on the angel's shoulder and looked out over the edge of the world.

"Oh, shit— okay," he told himself, and his voice was lost to the roar of the wind. "You can do this." He wasn't sure he believed himself.

The walkway led up, across the angel's shoulder to a door in the side of her face. It stood open, and he made himself move achingly slowly for fear of slipping on the smooth bronze. Inside, he felt a whole lot safer, especially after he'd spun the door shut behind him. There was no observation room beyond; merely a hanging circular platform that took up what had to be nearly the entirety of the width of the angel's face, and on the other side of the platform, directly across from him, an elevator. Booker headed for it, but halfway across, the chains supporting the surface creaked and cracked, and then the floor fell out from under him, sending him tumbling down into the room below.

Elizabeth was standing on a raised stage, staring wistfully out of a window that looked as if it had been set into one of the angel's eyes, but the commotion caused by Booker's sudden entrance into her quarters made her start and whirl around. Booker bounced off the edge of the stage, grabbed for it with his uninjured hand, and managed to halt his fall; then he hauled himself up and hooked his elbows over the lip of the stage, so that he was staring straight upwards into the young lady's face.

She stared right back at him with an expression of complete shock, frozen with a leather-bound copy of the _Odyssey_ held before her like a shield.

"Uhm," Booker said, realizing how he must look, all bruised and filthy with bloodstained clothes. "Hi."

Elizabeth shrieked and hurled Homer's opus at him.

She had very good aim. Booker tumbled backwards off the stage to land on his back on the glossy hardwood floor, winded. There was a loud thump as _Principles of Theoretical Physics _bounced past his head, followed by a collection of Poe; Austen's _Emma _collided with his stomach, knocking the remaining breath out of him with a _whoof!_

"Would you—" He raised his arm in time to deflect _Another Ark for Another Time_, its cover stamped with a colored lithograph of a half-constructed Monument Tower. "Would you _stop that!_"

Elizabeth froze, another book at the ready. Booker stretched a hand out to her, and she flinched. "Hey. I'm not gonna hurt you."

Her eyebrows crinkled down and she glowered at him suspiciously. "Don't come any closer." Booker held up his hands, palms out in a gesture of surrender, and did his best to look reassuring. Elizabeth's eyes narrowed further. "Who _are _you?"

"The name's DeWitt. I'm a friend. I've come to get you out of here."

Her eyes widened and her face went slack with delight at that. Cautiously, she lowered her book. Booker glanced at it surreptitiously: H.G. Wells,_ The Invisible Man_. Not as efficacious a weapon as the _Odyssey_, perhaps, but he had to approve of her choice of literature.

"Are you real?" Elizabeth said, barely more than a whisper. Booker smiled at her, feeling oddly sad. How many people did the poor kid see on a day-to-day basis, he wondered?

"Real enough," he told her, and her smile widened. She reached out tentatively, and when he didn't move, she prodded his chest with the tips of her fingers as if verifying that he was, in fact, solid. This having been confirmed, she laughed breathlessly and let her book flutter to the floor. "I'm—"

She was cut off by a jaunty whistled tune, like something played on a penny organ. Booker looked around for the source, startled, but stopped when he saw the look on Elizabeth's face. "You— you've got to go," she said, sounding terrified.

"What? Why?"

"He's coming, you don't want to be here when he gets here! Go!" Elizabeth pushed at him hurriedly. From above came another whistling sound, but this was higher-pitched, mechanical, shrill and grating and harsh. Elizabeth turned and shouted up through the hole in her ceiling. "Just a minute, I'm getting dressed!"

"Look," Booker said, "just— I can get you out of here. Isn't that what you wanted?"

She turned to him, looking desperate and panicked. "There's no way out, trust me, I've looked—"

The noise came again, more insistently. Elizabeth glared back up at the ceiling and stamped her foot petulantly, and Booker had to stifle a snort. "Stop it! You're too impatient, that's enough!"

The answering whistle was milder, but still sounded irritated. Booker dug into his rucksack and pulled out the thaumatrope key, with the bird on one side and the cage on the other.

"What about this?"

"W-what about it?" Elizabeth wasn't looking at him; she was still staring up at the ceiling and shoving Booker backwards towards the wall. The shrilling sound had resumed and was growing louder, more rapid.

"This is the way out, isn't it?"

Now Elizabeth whirled to face him, saw the key in his hand, and snatched it away from him. "Wh— give it to me!" She twirled it around, watching the bird blur in and out of the cage. Then she held it up to a heavy door between two bookcases at the far end of the room. It was the same one she had been photographed investigating, the bird and the cage painted on its surface perfect matches to the thaumatrope key. Elizabeth ran to it, pushed the enameled bird aside, and fitted the key into the lock beneath. It turned; she did the same with the cage lock, and the door swung open just as the half-hanging disc in the ceiling fell free with a massive crash. There was another loud, prolonged shriek, and the ceiling started to crumble.

Elizabeth moaned. "Come on, we have to get out of here!" She shoved through the crack in the door, and Booker hurriedly followed, glancing behind in time to see one huge orange eye staring at him through a massive gash that had been torn through the wall.

"Down, go down," he shouted after the girl, squeezing past the heavy door as well. She didn't acknowledge him, but she ran down the walkway, back in the direction of the lift. Booker raced after her, drawing his pistol with his good hand, but before he could catch up with her the wall of the statue exploded. Huge brass claws raked the air, grabbing for him, and he stumbled backwards, cursing.

"The Hell _is_ that thing?"

"It's his job to keep me locked up in here!" Elizabeth shouted. She had reached the valve door and was hauling ineffectually at the wheel, but she could barely get it to budge. Booker rolled under the groping claws, darted down the hall, and shouldered her aside.

"Hey!"

"Let me," he snapped, and, after a moment, "...Sorry." He got the door open and they darted into the observation room. Booker ran ahead and slammed a hand against the call button. Elizabeth was halfway to him before she noticed the two-way mirror and froze.

"That's my bedroom," she said in horror. "They were _watching _me?"

"Yeah," he said darkly.

She rounded on him. "_Why?_ What do they want from me? What do they—"

With a massive, terrible screeching, the elevator shaft was torn away. A wicked, curved metal beak stabbed into the gap, retreated, was replaced by a glowing red eye. That retreated too, only to be followed by another slash of those terrible claws, but the beast could not fit into the hole it had torn.

"That way! Go! _Go!_" Booker shoved Elizabeth out of the way, ducked around the claws, grabbed her shoulder, and hauled her back onto the walkway.

"Where are we going?"

"Up," he panted as they ran. He didn't have much of a plan, but at least they'd be able to see their assailant from the top of the tower. The thing appeared to be able to fly; if it was hydrogen-driven, perhaps it would be vulnerable to the fiery Devil's Kiss vigor.

"What do they want from me?" Elizabeth repeated, almost a sob. "What _am_ I?" When Booker didn't respond, she shouted again, desperately— "_What am I?_"

Booker didn't know. "You're the girl who's getting out of this tower," he told her, and meant it.

They ran. The metal bird-creature followed them, stabbing through the walls, ripping up the walkways, shrieking furiously, beating huge canvas wings against the sides of the statue as it tried to get to them. The tower rocked, and Elizabeth staggered and fell backwards. Booker caught her, propped her back on her feet, shoved her forwards again.

"He's tearing this place apart," she cried, stumbling as she craned her neck to stare at the beast.

"Be careful, Elizabeth!"

She rounded on him, expression unreadable. "How do you know my name?"

"This is really— not the best time—!" he gasped, leaping aside as a bronze support beam came crashing down in front of them, shearing the walkway in half. "_Jump!_"

Elizabeth jumped, and Booker jumped after her, and then they were running up stairs, the girl's mechanical warden still hard on their tail.

The staircase spiraled upwards to let out on the very top of the statue. There was no railing, no platform, no walkway: only the smooth, tarnished bronze, and all around them empty sky.

There was another earsplitting shriek. Booker caught a glance of the thing as it swooped around them. It was huge, the size of a small building, part bird, part bat, all metal and canvas and tubing. It came straight for them, and Booker knew he wouldn't be able to fight it. He stuck his right hand into the bracer of the skyhook, wrapped his free arm around Elizabeth's waist, and, ignoring her increasingly-panicked cries of protest, hurled them both over the edge of the statue.

The nearest skyline was nearly two hundred feet below them, and they hit it hard, sending up a shower of sparks and a massive, bone-jarring clang. Booker thought his shoulder was going to dislocate, or that the hook would give and send them falling down to the world below, but somehow it managed to support the extra weight, and then they were flying.

Elizabeth clung to him, face buried in his shirt, making muffled whimpering sounds. "We're going to die, we're going to die, we're going to die!"

"We're not gonna die, just hold on!" Booker tried to sound reassuring and failed miserably. That terrible whistling screech came again, and Elizabeth's warden reared in front of them, shearing through the skyline with the earsplitting shriek of tortured metal.

There was nothing else to grab onto; the skyline disappeared upwards before Booker could register what was happening. The rail ran out and the hook spun free, the world whirling beneath them, and Elizabeth's hand tore from his. There was water below, closer than the earth, but still too, too far, and all around them was roaring, empty air; they grabbed for each other, missed, and then plunged helplessly towards the darkness below.

* * *

1. That was absolutely _awful_. And he accuses _us _of having terrible minds(2)?

2. If he's going to start making puns on a regular basis, I think I'm going to have to agree with you, sister: this _was _a bad idea(3).

3. I suppose you could say it was _punfortunate_ that you didn't realize this sooner(4).

4. That's it— I'm disowning you(5).

5. I thought you'd be proud(6).

6. No, not really.

7. This is a dreadful life philosophy that we heartily recommend against. While naming no names, we further recommend against any musicians who may or may not encourage you to behave along such lines.

8. There are several universes in which he does. It's just as amusing each time. In fact, we suggest you try it; we've been in pressing need of a laugh lately, and my sister, as you can see, has not been much help in the matter.

9. Which can't really be called 'driving' in any sense of the term, no matter how valiant the effort of imagination(10).

10. You might say the entire operation was something of a train wreck(11).

11. So help me, _if I have to stop this airship...!_

* * *

_..._

* * *

_AN: __Thanks for reading! As always, I live for your feedback! Let me know what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong, what you'd like to see changed, or anything else! I won't be insulted, I promise! I want to become a better writer, after all!_

_If you're interested, you can read about the Hotchkiss M1909 (which is the machine gun Booker would realistically have carried, and is a 30-pound monstrosity of a machine) here: http**:****/****/**en**.**wikipedia**.**org/wiki/Hotchkiss_M1909 _

_Coming up next: **A Short Drop and a Sudden Stop** (also known as, HOW MUCH FLUFFY SHIP TEASING CAN I PUT INTO ONE CHAPTER WHILE STILL KILLING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE). Stay tuned!_


	5. A Short Drop and a Sudden Stop

_AN: __Bluh, I'm so sorry about the wait! I seem to be incapable of getting this out at a reasonable pace. I'm still kicking though, don't worry! And I have no plans to abandon this project any time soon!_

_This chapter's quote has been brought to you by the Department of Gratuitous and Unnecessary Shakespeare. I swear I'm not only using it to sound erudite; it's relevant to the content, I promise!  
__(Speaking of which, how do we feel about the quotes? I try to find ones that seem fitting to either the events or themes of the chapter they precede, but if you don't like them, or find them unnecessary or distracting, don't hesitate to tell me!)  
__Relatedly, the footnotes will be remaining at the bottom of the story, since the few comments I received in regards to the matter seemed to concur that this was the best way to do it. Sorry if this bothers you; I think the suggestion of reloading the story in a new tab, scrolling to the bottom, and switching between the two is a good one, so you might try that and see how it works._

_As always, your feedback has been great and wonderful I love all of you wow you're amazing guys gosh dgjhfjskfhdskjh TTvTT thANK YOOOUUUU_

_Aaaaand, despite my best efforts, we've got another long one here. It's not as bad as the previous chapter, but it's up there. Maybe the next few, which will contain onlythe Hall of Heroes arc and the sequence by which Daisy gets ahold of the First Lady, will be shorter, but we'll see._

_In other news, the story has now passed the hundred pages mark. Uh... Hooray?_

* * *

_"Will all great Neptune's ocean  
__wash this blood clean from my hand?  
__No, this my hand will rather  
__the multitudinous seas incarnadine,  
__making the green one red."  
_—William Shakespeare

**CHAPTER FIVE**: A Short Drop and a Sudden Stop.

JULY 7, 1912

Once again, Booker dreamed of New York burning. The Lutece twins stood in the door to his office, haloed by a corona of flames, and smiled. Their eyes were black and empty pits.

He woke with a start, drenched in sweat.

No, not sweat. Seawater. He could smell it, hear the sound of waves, taste salt upon his lips. He was alive, then. Slowly, carefully, Booker cracked his eyes open. Blue sky swam into view above him, and then a blurry human figure, a girl. He could just make out long chocolate-black hair, the round hollows of blue eyes, a gentle smile. For a moment he thought that it was _her_, that this was his punishment or his absolution, and he reached a heavy hand towards her face. He had to tell her, to say how _sorry_ he was, but all he managed was a slurred, "Anna..."

Small hands wrapped around his. "No," she said, giving him a sad sort of smile. "It's me, Elizabeth. Remember?"

Booker blinked and she wobbled into focus. Elizabeth. Right. "Uh. Where are we?"

"Back in the land of the living," she said. She was still holding on to his hand with both of hers. "You look terrible."

"'M fine."

She raised an eyebrow at him, clearly unconvinced. "I just... need a minute," he said thickly. Lord, he even sounded terrible. No wonder she didn't believe him. "Really."

Her unimpressed eyebrow did not lower, but she dropped his hand. It thumped heavily into the soft, scratchy sand, and he did his best not to be disappointed. Then the girl started suddenly and looked around, and Booker tried to sit up, steeling himself for a fight despite feeling like nine kinds of death.

"Do you hear that?"

"Wha, what?"

"It's music, Mr. DeWitt, don't you hear it?"

Booker sank back down in the sand, relieved. "Go on," he mumbled, flopping a hand vaguely in the direction she was looking. "I'll just be a minute."

"Are you sure?" It was clear the girl wanted to go, but she appeared loath to leave him lying in the sand like so much flotsam.

"Yeah. G'on. 'M'sure." Blackness was already clouding his vision. The last thing he saw was Elizabeth glancing over her shoulder at him as she walked away, an expression of deep concern upon her lovely face.

* * *

Booker had no perception of how long he laid there on the mysterious beach. Nobody interacted with him, though he could hear vague, distant voices that indicated that there were people nearby; if they knew of his current state they were either too afraid or too apathetic to approach. Eventually, though, he managed to open his eyes and sit up. Every inch of him ached, and his skin was dusted with bruises and sand in equal measure. His left wrist was blackened and throbbing, and his right shoulder felt sharp and tight. His head ached fiercely, and his mouth was sour and full of sand. In short, he felt like Hell.

Nevertheless, Booker made himself stand and assess his surroundings. He stood on a sunset-lit beach towards the bottom of the city. Below him, the day had cleared, or perhaps it was another; the clouds had parted to reveal patchwork fields of jewel-green, winding sun-gilded rivers, and, far off on the horizon, low rolling mountains. Above, though, heavy clouds obscured the rest of the city from view. It looked like it might rain, but that hadn't stopped the citizens of Columbia from enjoying their summer. Music was playing somewhere in the distance, and people were scattered across the beach: stretched out on blankets, digging in the sand, or wading in the short stretch of water that appeared to just cascade off the edge of the world about half a mile away. To his back, on the other side of the strip of sand, was a wall of colorful buildings, above which stretched a huge electrified sign that announced this place as 'Battleship Bay'. A dirigible hung with blue-and-gold bunting drifted above it, the buzz of its engines a gentle, muted roar.

Booker looked down again. His skyhook was wedged blades-first into the wet sand a few hundred feet away, accompanied by his leather bag, which had spilled open and was being attacked energetically by a pair of seagulls. He staggered over to it and kicked at the birds, which squawked reproachfully at him and flapped away only a short distance before settling down to watch him with beady eyes. The skyhook appeared undamaged, but most of the contents of his bag had been lost. His pistol and the Hotchkiss were long gone, the latter having been abandoned in Comstock's falling airship, the former lost in the flight from the Tower; and the Luteces' cedarwood box, all of his ammo, his last phial of salts, and all of the papers and photographs were likewise missing. He still had the Lady's voxophone and his badge, though; and, scattered in the sand about his feet, the majority of the contents of his wallet.

He did not, however, have Elizabeth.

Great.

A hazy memory of her running off in search of music returned to him, and he paused, listening. The sound of violins and harpsichord drifted over the sand, so Booker turned and headed off in what he hoped was the general direction of its source, praying she would still be there who knew how many hours later. He passed many beachgoers, none of whom had anything helpful to say in response to his inquiries; several stands vending sausages, spun sugar, and iced drinks; and a poster advertising rides on the _First Lady_, the zeppelin he'd seen from the waterfront. If he could find out how to get ahold of a couple tickets, he thought, that could be their way back to New York.

But to do that, he had to find the girl.

After about a half-hour or so's worth of wandering the beach, he came upon Elizabeth at last, at the end of a long whitewashed pier that stretched out into the water. A board in the sand announced 'Dancing at Dusk', and the girl had taken to it with gusto. She was spinning about in the center of the promenade, laughing, her dark hair flying behind her as she twirled from hand to hand. A red-haired gentleman had her, and then a lady in an emerald-green walking gown, and then another man; she caught sight of Booker over her partner's shoulder as they waltzed past and gave him a grin of pure, wholehearted delight. The next break in the music saw her parted from her gentleman, and she reached out, grabbed Booker's hands, and dragged him towards the circle.

"Hello! Isn't this wonderful? Oh, come dance with me, Mr. DeWitt!"

Booker planted his feet and refused to move. "I don't dance."

Elizabeth gave him a look. "Come on! What could be better than this?" And she released his hands again to spin around, arms flung wide, gesturing rapturously at her surroundings. Booker sighed. The longer they stayed here, the more likely Comstock's frightfully loyal forces were to catch up with them... but how to convince her that they had to go?

The memory of her painting and the hole in the world came back to him with sudden clarity. "Uh... How 'bout Paris?"

That worked. "Paris!" She turned to face him, eyes shining with delight, but then her face fell. "I-I don't understand. How could we get there?"

Booker cast about for a feasible answer. "It's where that airship's goin'," he said with a burst of inspiration, pointing as the _First Lady_ buzzed past again, "but if you want to stay and dance, we could—"

"No, no, let's go! Come on, let's go right now!" And she grabbed his hand again and pulled him back down the boardwalk, following the _First Lady_.

_The irony of that_, he thought as he ambled along behind her, hands in his pockets. He found himself watching her as she darted about, though he was careful to glance away and feign disinterest whenever she turned back to look at him. She looked so much like her lady mother, but it was all wrong. When she laughed there was no coolness behind it, and kindness shone from her very core; he thought there could not be a manipulative bone in her body. She radiated innocence to the immediate universe, and though it was clear she was quite intelligent— _Principles of Theoretical Physics_ came to mind— her naïveté was both deep-seated and obvious. It was no wonder, really; she'd grown up locked away in a tower, looking down at the world but never able to reach it, with only books and a murderous mechanical beast for company. Everything fascinated her, and crossing the sandy crescent of Battleship Bay took time. Every few minutes the girl would get distracted by something new and run over, calling for Booker to follow: "Oh, what's that?" — "Come look at this, Mr. DeWitt!" — "What is that!"

Once she stopped, stared at the ground for several minutes, and then bent to pick up a stone. "Watch _this_," she said, and flung it out over the water; it bounced once, twice, three, four, six times before sinking out of sight. The girl looked as triumphant as if she'd just won a marathon. "Ha!"

Booker couldn't stop himself from quirking the corner of his mouth into a smile. Elizabeth beamed at him, found another stone, and skipped it again: three bounces. Then another, and another, looking just as delighted each time a stone skidded across the water.

"Y'know," Booker said, after the fifth or sixth time of this, "that airship's not gonna be there forever."

She shot him a pleading glance. "Just one more?"

He tried to say no, that they had to go now, that time wasted was time for Comstock and his bird to catch up with them. He tried to tell her that they didn't have the luxury of waiting any longer. He really, honestly tried.

"...Yeah, okay."

The smile she gave him when the little rock bounced seven times before disappearing was entirely worth it.

They moved on. A group of men in bathing costumes were hefting medicine balls in unison, and Elizabeth ran over to them, tried valiantly to lift a spare ball that had rolled away from the group, failed utterly, and fell backwards into the sand.

"Don't laugh!" she cried, scarlet from her ears to her collarbones. Booker obediently shut his mouth, but he couldn't stop himself from snickering quietly at her put-out expression. She didn't get distracted again, after that.

From the waterfront, they moved on to the promenade above Battleship Bay, coming out through a turnstile into a curio shop full of souvenirs: tin statues of Elizabeth's tower, posters of scenic areas of Columbia, and portraits of Father Comstock. Elizabeth stopped dead when she saw these, wrapping her arms tight around herself.

"Mr. DeWitt, look," she said. "Comstock. I've read about him. They say he can see the future."

_I'll bet they didn't mention anything about what he's done to you_, Booker thought, but all he said was, "They say a lot of things."

"I don't like his look," she said, and then jumped as the shopkeeper spoke up from behind the counter.

"Do you mislike the look of the Prophet, young lady, or his gaze?"

Elizabeth didn't answer him, just looked up at Booker with an unreadable expression. "Can we leave now?"

They left the gift shop, winding up a flight of stairs to emerge onto the promenade looking out over the beach. Immediately Elizabeth darted ahead, crying, "Oh, come look at this!"

Booker made to follow her, and then stopped dead in his tracks.

"The bird?"

"Or the cage?"

"These two again...?" He'd almost forgotten the twins even existed(1). He wasn't eager to trust them, not after seeing their name on the signs in Elizabeth's tower, but then:

"Madame Lutece! Oh, no—"

"Hush, child. I've long since dispensed with being the Rosalind you knew. If anyone is to hear of your adventures, it shan't be from me."

"You mean that?"

"I am not given to dishonesty."

Booker snorted, and Madame Lutece gave him a critical look. "There is a difference, good sir, between not speaking the truth and speaking something that is untrue."

Elizabeth looked between them with an expression of utter bewilderment. "Do you know each other?"

"We do," said Madame Lutece.

"Or we have," added her brother.

"We will have known, I think; is this the one where he knows about—"

"_No_," the brother interjected, looking alarmed.

"Ah. Right, he chose 'tails' that time. We _will_ know him, I suppose is best. We'll be able to tell for certain as soon as he chooses the cage."

"Or the bird," said the brother.

"Ah, but nothing beats the cage."

Booker looked; each of the twins held a black velvet box, each containing a cameo displayed upon a plush cushion. Elizabeth picked the boxes up and regarded them critically.

"What do you think? They're both so beautiful."

"This game again? No, don't answer that," he said, when the Twins appeared to be about to speak. He pointed to a box without really looking; it seemed the best way to deal with Lutece was to shut his eyes and go along with it. "That one."

"I love it!" Elizabeth took the cameo and fastened it around her neck, pausing to admire her reflection in a shop window. Both Luteces looked her up and down in unison.

"I expected the bird," the brother said, sounding put-out.

"If you're going to be a sore loser, then I shan't do this again."

The Twins turned as one, ducked behind a taffy stand, and disappeared. Booker gave a half-hearted inspection of the stand; there was only a wall behind it, and no hiding place into which two human beings could reasonably fit. He hadn't really expected anything different.

"Let's go." He headed down the boardwalk, but stopped and looked back at Elizabeth's cry of alarm. He thought for a moment that she had been recognized at last; then he saw that she was leaning out over the railing, staring out at the city above. He followed her gaze to see that the clouds had parted; and there, bleeding black smoke from between its exposed iron ribs, was her tower.

One of its wings had been sheared entirely off, as had its head; there was a great cleft down its center from its neck to its navel. The half that still had its wing had tilted dangerously to the side, and looked close to breaking free as well. All around them, people were stopping, staring, even sobbing outright.

"Fitzroy," Booker heard a man say. "It has to be! No-one else would do such a thing."

"Why didn't the Prophet foresee this?" someone else cried.

Booker went over to where Elizabeth stood frozen, clutching the railing, and hovered there for a moment, painfully unsure of what he was supposed to do.

"Are you all right?"

"It was my home," she said, so quietly he had to lean down to hear her. "It was my prison, but it was my home. It was all I ever knew."

Booker had never been particularly good at comforting someone. He patted her shoulder awkwardly. "Hey. It's gonna be okay."

Elizabeth turned to smile up at him, and he snatched his hand from her shoulder; his palm felt as if it had suddenly caught fire.

"Yes," she said.

He coughed, glanced away, rubbed at the back of his neck. "Let's keep moving, before they put two'n two together and figure out who we are."

Elizabeth followed him without hesitation. There were many signs pointing them in the direction of the _First Lady_'s aerodrome, but when they got to the byway that would let them off the boardwalk and into the rest of Battleship Bay, they found it blocked off by a cluster of sawhorses. Policemen were searching bags, holding up posters announcing that the False Shepherd was '_WANTED_ _— P__referably Dead!_'

"Damn it." Booker swore under his breath; they sure weren't getting through that way, even if the posters still claimed he was either 'a mulatto dwarf, or a Frenchman with a missing left eye'. He didn't know if there was another way out of the park, and if Comstock's police were already here, he didn't think they were going to have time to find out.

"Mr. DeWitt! Over here!"

"What?" Booker snapped, irritated at having his train of thought forcibly derailed. Elizabeth jumped at his harsh tone and gave him a reproachful stare. "S-sorry. What?" he said, a touch more gently. Elizabeth pointed. There was a door at the far end of the entry hall, marked with a sign that said '_Service Entrance. Keep Locked During Business Hours_.'

Booker shot a surreptitious glance back at the crowd of policemen. They were occupied with a man who was quite clearly extremely drunk, and was shouting at them about the person called Fitzroy, and their incompetence in catching her.

"Great," he told her, and she inflated visibly. "Let's go, quick."

But when he tried it, the service door was locked. Booker swore again. Trust officials in Columbia to be better about security than New Yorkers, he thought angrily; this must be the first time he'd actually seen a "keep locked" sign heeded.

"Let me," Elizabeth whispered, ducking under his elbow to crouch before the door.

"Elizabeth, there's no point, it's locked, we should—"

But the girl was not listening to him. She pulled a pair of pins from her hair, letting a long strand of it fall down in front of her face, and folded one of them open.

"What are you doing—?"

She glared at him. "You're a roguish type!" she hissed. "What does it _look like_?" She gave the door a pointed shove, and it swung open. Booker stared at her speechlessly for a moment, and then shuttled them both through before the nearby officers could look over and see them.

"Where did you learn to pick locks?" he demanded as soon as the door was shut safely behind them.

Elizabeth smirked at him. "Trapped in a tower with nothing but books and spare time? You would be surprised by what I know how to do." And she stalked off down the hall, still with that smug, insufferable little smile on her face. Booker stared after her with a mixture of appreciation, shock, and utter indignation. She was _mocking_ him, the– the little _minx_! Then he realized she wasn't waiting for him, and hurried to catch up with her. The service door had let out into a long, narrow ticket-taker's office, lined with desks and typewriters and filing cabinets. Booker stopped to riffle through the various compartments, looking for a map, unsold tickets for the _First Lady_, anything that could help them. No tickets were forthcoming, but he found a colored map of Battleship Bay, a pamphlet advertising vigors that came with a free phial of salts, and, nestled together in the same drawer, a volcanic pistol, a box of .38 cartridges, and the key to the till.

When Booker made strategic use of the latter, Elizabeth gave him a look. "Aren't _we_ the well-to-do sort."

He gave her a look right back. "I take it that means your idea of the 'roguish type' don't extend to petty thievery, then."

She made a noise halfway between a scoff and a laugh. "At least you're upfront about it."

Booker grinned wryly at her. "C'mon," he said. "We've got a ways to go yet."

The ticket-master's office exited into a narrow, moldering service corridor. High, grimy windows provided the only light, and the whitewashed wood was stained with water damage. A sign on the wall said, '_Respect Your Betters! Keep out of sight and speak only when spoken to!_' Below it was a dented, broken medical automaton, its wares spilling out onto the warped wooden floorboards. Elizabeth crouched before it, scuffing through the scattered goods. She looked up and frowned critically when Booker came to hover over her shoulder.

"You look terrible."

"Gee, thanks."

"Hush. Let me see if there's not something here that can help you." She rattled around some more, found a roll of gauze and a little red-black bottle, and stood. "Let me see your wrist."

"I'm _fine_—"

Her stare could've cut glass. Booker relented, offering her his left hand and trying not to wince at the throb of pain the motion caused. Elizabeth squeaked at the sight of the mottled-purple skin, but didn't pull away. She handed him the packet of bandages and the stoppered bottle, and then, frowning in concentration, placed her hands over his and pressed down on his shattered wrist. He hissed between his teeth as the pain flared again, but she only furrowed her brow and then, with one quick motion, pulled her hands apart.

Everything shuddered briefly. Booker stared. The wound was gone, as was the pain, and every other hurt he had obtained in his flight from the raffle square all that time ago.

"Wh– _how did you do that?_"

Elizabeth shook her head, raising a hand to her brow. Booker saw that she was shaking, and sweat had beaded on her forehead.

"Later."

"Yeah, okay. Now it's you who don't look so good."

She smiled weakly. "I'll be fine. It happens all the time."

"So... this magical healing hoodoo, that's something you do on a, uh, regular basis?"

"Of course. Obviously." Her voice was stronger now, and though her hands still trembled, there was a bit more color in her face. "Come on. Let's keep moving."

The service corridor ended at a door which led, according to the sign above it, to the Battleship Bay Arcade; before they could reach it, however, they were hailed by a voice, emanating from an offshoot of the hall.

"Hey! Mister! Over here!"

In an alcove that seemed to be devoted mainly to storage, there sat a couple: a pale, malnourished man with a fading black eye, and a small dark woman, leaning her head on his shoulder. They looked familiar, but where–?

"The raffle," Booker said, realizing. Elizabeth looked at him questioningly; he waved her away, mouthing, '_Later_.'

"You saved our lives," said the man. "We wouldn't've gotten away without you. "

The woman gave him a weary but earnest smile. "Daisy always said someone like you would come along."

"Wha– who's Daisy?" The name was familiar, he thought, but he didn't know anybody named Daisy, did he? Had she been a dance-hall girl? How'd she come to Columbia if—

The world faded in and out of focus– he saw hard jet eyes and a wicked smile—

"Here."

"–Huh?" Booker snapped back to reality to see the woman offering him a black enamel box. Both she and Elizabeth were staring at him with some concern; he took it quickly, to cover his confusion, and opened it. Inside was a coil of fine red silk, and atop it a pin in the fashion of a burning tree.

"Take it," said the woman. "I'm sorry we don't got more t'offer you, truly. But if ever you find yourself in need of aid, they'll know you speak with the people's voice, and you'll have it."

"What?" Booker said. The woman just smiled and stepped backwards, retreating into the shadows of the little alcove.

"Daisy always knew you'd come," she said.

As soon as they had taken their leave, Booker stopped, so suddenly that Elizabeth nearly walked right into him.

"Who's Daisy?" he said aloud into the empty air. When he glanced down at the girl as if hoping she'd have all the answers, she shrugged, looking as confused as he felt.

"I'm afraid I haven't the slightest idea. Are you all right, Mr. DeWitt? You seemed to go blank for a moment and sort of... started bleeding."

"What?" Booker raised a hand to his face, and his fingertips came away red. He hastily wiped the blood away, irritated and alarmed and a whole lot of other things that he didn't quite understand. "I– I dunno. Let's get out of here, 'fore something worse happens."

"...Yeah."

* * *

The arcade at Battleship Bay was thronged with people. There were shops and stands and dioramas; jazzy music filtered through mounted speakers, interspersed by tips on "how to tell if your maid has fallen in with the Vox Populi!", whatever _that_ was. The center of the main hall was lined with little mechanical boxes that looked like Punch-and-Judy shows, but which were labeled '_Duke and Dimwit_' and seemed to spill Columbian propaganda tailored specifically for children. Elizabeth bounced up and down when she discovered there was a new one; Booker had to hook a finger into the back of her collar and pull her away before she could be lost to him entirely. She quickly escaped him again, though, to marvel at a spun sugar vendor, who offered her a paper cone of the stuff with a gallant flourish.

"Here you are, Miss! Free for the most beautiful girl in Columbia," he said grandly, and Elizabeth blushed and giggled and proceeded to prod experimentally at the spun sugar, clearly unsure of what to do with it.

"I can't believe how much I've missed," she said, when she caught Booker watching her. "There's so much that I don't know about."

And yet there was plenty that she did know. She spouted facts about the city's history and the construction of Battleship Bay, which she'd learned, he found upon inquiring, "From one of the books I threw at you; they also served passing well for reading." A young woman in a fawn driving coat asked Booker sweetly for the time, but before he could mutter something at her and be on his way, Elizabeth had appeared at his side, looped her arm through his, and said, just as sweetly, "It's just past seven-thirty."

The woman's mouth pressed into a thin line. "Oh. Thank you."

Elizabeth stuck her tongue out at the other girl's retreating back. Booker grinned down at her, thoroughly amused.

"Shot down, huh?"

"Well, I can't have my stalwart savior getting distracted before we even leave for Paris, can I?"

Booker felt a sudden pang of guilt, and quickly shoved it aside. "Hey, I ain't exactly a knight in shining armor."

"No," Elizabeth agreed, smiling, "but you're the closest I've got."

She did not remove her arm from his until they had reached the end of the arcade, when she slipped free to study the map that had been posted in front of the turnstiles. Her sudden absence gave Booker pause; he'd been enjoying the contact. It'd been a long time since he'd had a real friend.

_No, no! You're giving her over to Samuels, remember? Don't get attached to her! _He shook his head, chastising himself for even thinking it. This was just a job, he had to remember that. _Bring back the girl, and wipe away the debt_. Nothing more, nothing less.

Only... Samuels had never said he was going to keep her, only that he wanted to talk to her, see if he could get her on his side. And after that... well, Booker always had sort of wanted to see where all the rage about Paris came from. Nobody said he had to keep the girl once the job was done, but, despite everything that had happened, he _missed _Anna. Was it so bad that part of him almost hoped Elizabeth would take her place?

"Mr. DeWitt?"

"Wha–?" He looked down to see Elizabeth regarding him with some concern.

She ran her fingers over the burnished gold cage at her throat. "You were staring at me."

"Sorry. Just thinking."

"About?"

So, she couldn't tell when someone was loath to talk. Booker sighed. "You just remind me of someone is all."

"Oh." She paused, shifted from foot to foot awkwardly. "Is that good?"

Booker was not inclined to be truthful. "I'm not sure yet," he said. So much for not being truthful. He gave her a rueful smile, painfully aware of the fact that he was going a bit red. "We, uh. Still have an airship to catch, you know."

The clumsy subject change worked better than he could have hoped; Elizabeth perked up, practically glowing as wide smile spread across her face.

"Paris!" she cried happily.

"Paris." Booker offered her his arm again, and she took it easily, beaming at the prospect of seeing the City of Lights. They left the arcade, just as the guard called out that the park was closing, and headed up through the turnstiles towards the terminal that would take them to Soldiers' Field and the _First Lady_.

"Annabelle? Is that you?"

Booker stopped dead. He didn't notice the tension in his fingers until Elizabeth squirmed away from him, crying, "Ow, you're hurting me! What's wrong?"

He turned. A young fair-haired woman in a green uniform was staring at them, or rather, staring at Elizabeth.

"Annabelle, it's me, Esther! Don't you remember me?"

Elizabeth laughed nervously. "Oh, no, I, I'm not Annabelle. M-my name's Elizabeth."

This seemed to confuse the girl deeply. She swayed on her feet as if drunk, or exhausted past the point of coherence. "You're… n-not Annabelle?" Booker tried not to twitch every time she said the name. "Elizabeth, that's... that's a lovely name..." And the young woman wandered off, back towards the turnstile, still swaying slightly.

Elizabeth looked at Booker. Booker looked at Elizabeth.

"Was it just me," he said, "or did it look like she was bleeding to you?"

"Yes," Elizabeth said. "You're right, her nose was bleeding. The same way yours did when you asked me who Daisy was. I've still no idea about that, by the way."

Booker shook his head, ran a hand through his hair. "There is something very wrong with this town."

"You're telling me." Elizabeth grabbed his arm again and began tugging him up the stairs. "We'll soon be free of it, though. Come on! The office is just through here, we're almost there!"

She practically dragged him up the last flight of stairs to the terminal, taking the steps two at a time and bouncing giddily. A man was playing the fiddle about halfway down the hall, sad and sweet, but other than that, the terminal was very quiet.

Unsettlingly quiet, actually. He was getting a bad feeling about this. There had been hundreds of people in Battleship Bay – on the sand, on the boardwalk, in the arcade – but here there were only a few men and women, talking in hushed voices and shooting Booker and Elizabeth furtive glances as they passed. A man in a bowler hat leaned against the wall next to the office, picking his teeth with a bowie knife. The hallway adjacent to the terminal had been blocked off by a high slatted metal grate, despite being the only apparent way out of the park. The ticket-master was speaking rapidly into the receiver of a telephone, and glanced up only briefly when they stopped at the window before hunching away and continuing his conversation at an even more hushed and hurried pace. Booker gently ushered Elizabeth behind him, ignoring her confused protests. He was getting a _very _bad feeling about this.

"...Carrying something. He's with her," the ticket-master was saying. "How do you want to proceed?"

Something was very wrong here. "Excuse me," Booker said coolly, drumming the fingers of one hand on the countertop and groping in his bag for the newfound pistol with the other. He really hoped he wouldn't have to use it – he was sure Elizabeth would just _love _it if he started shooting up the place – but as far as obvious traps went, this one was more blatant than most.

The ticket-master barely spared him a glance. "Yeah, just a minute, friend," he said. Then, to the person on the other end of the line: "I'll ring you back once the matter's in hand. Got it. Send in the bird."

Bird.

Elizabeth's voice floated back to him, terrified and desperate: _"It's his job to keep me locked up in here!" _

Well, there went all hope for a peaceful resolution. As soon as the ticket-master turned round to face him again, Booker reached through the window, grabbed the man by the hair, and slammed his head into the corner of the desk as hard as he could. There was a wet _crunch_,and the ticket-master reeled backwards and collapsed, his forehead an ugly, bloody trench.

Elizabeth screamed. Booker whirled around, ready to come to her aid, but it was he that she was stumbling away from, pale and panicked.

"Get away from me!" she shouted at him, and then turned and ran— straight into the clutches of the man in the bowler hat. She shrieked again and fought against him, but he was a good foot and-a-half taller than her, and began dragging her away, unmindful of her vehement kicking and biting. Booker leapt forwards to grab Elizabeth's captor by the shoulder, fitting his free hand into the skyhook as he did; the hooks whirled to life, and he rammed them between the other man's shoulder blades with all his strength. The man shuddered and jerked and gurgled as the serrated hooks erupted out through his chest, and Elizabeth broke free of his grasp with a strangled, retching sob. Before Booker could try and speak to her, she sprinted for the exit, only to be caught again by the fiddler. He had abandoned the violin in exchange for a filigreed shotgun, and he seized Elizabeth's arm as she ran by; Booker grabbed for his own gun, but before he could do anything, the girl had rammed her knee upwards into her captor's groin and then punched him in the throat with her free hand. The man went down, wheezing, and Elizabeth bounded over him and made it to the fenced-off hallway, squeezing through the bars and disappearing before Booker could react. He cursed and chased after her, but before he could figure out a way to get the grate open, several policemen appeared behind it and opened fire.

Swearing, he leapt backwards and flung out a hand, sending crows exploding everywhere. The officers shouted and beat at them ineffectually, but by the time they got the grate open, Booker had gathered himself enough to make it to the relative cover of the space between two benches. He snapped his fingers and officers and birds alike ignited, screaming as a thick, sticky, molten paste soaked into clothes and feathers and skin. He ducked past their writhing forms, pausing only to snatch up the incapacitated fiddler's fallen shotgun. Then he ran from the terminal, clattering down the hallway and shouting for Elizabeth.

He found her at the gondola station, heaving desperately at the trolley's controls, and doubled his pace.

"Elizabeth, would you just _wait_!"

"Get away from me, you—!" Elizabeth reeled away from him, pressing herself into the corner of the cabin and refusing to look at him. Booker yanked at the controls before she could make another escape attempt, only turning to her once the gondola was moving safely along its rails.

"Now. Can we just talk about this for a minute?"

"You killed those people," Elizabeth whispered. Then, louder, "You _killed _those _people_! You're a _monster_!" She flung herself at him, slamming into his chest with both her hands and sending him stumbling back against the cabin wall. Then she turned, crossed her arms, and stared determinedly out the gondola window at the waters of the approaching island rushing by.

Booker sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation. "What did you think was going to happen? Hm?"

"…Huh?"

"Do you understand the expense these people went through to keep you locked up in that tower? You think folks like that are, are just gonna let you walk away? You are an _investment_ to them."

Elizabeth hugged herself and stared at the ground, looking miserable. Booker felt a pang of guilt; he hadn't meant to lecture her, but there was no way this job was getting done if the girl was going to try to escape him every time he turned the other way. "Look, I—"

"What do they want from me?"

"—What?"

"What do they want from me? Why all of, all of _this_?"

Booker shook his head. "I dunno," he said heavily. "But it's probably going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better."

Elizabeth clenched and unclenched her fists, still staring at the ground. Finally she looked up and met his eyes.

"I suppose I'd best get used to it," she said. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of blood that she either didn't notice or didn't care about. Booker felt an aberrant stab of alarm, but it was not her blood; if he had to guess, he'd say it had belonged to the man with the bowler hat. Then she sat down on the lip of the cabin window and stayed there, staring at the ground, her eyelids dropping lower and lower. By the time the gondola lurched to a halt several minutes later, she was asleep.

Booker looked her up and down. She was just a kid, wasn't she? They'd been moving fast all day, and, come to think of it, the only thing he'd seen her eat was the candy at the arcade. How often did seventeen-year-olds need to be fed(2)? He should probably find her something to eat, and a few hours' sleep wouldn't hurt either of them. The posters for the _First Lady _had been all over; no doubt it made daily rounds. Paris could wait until tomorrow.

Gently, Booker shook Elizabeth's shoulder, and she jerked awake with a start, her head thudding back against the glass.

"Wha, what? Oh! I'm sorry," she said, looking sheepish.

"Don't be," said Booker. "You done nothing wrong. Can't sleep here, though, it's just going back to the bay, and to the people that want us done harm."

"Okay." To her credit, Elizabeth stood immediately, stiff and determined. There were dark shadows under her eyes, he noticed; how long had those been there?

"Come on," he said. "Let's find us a place to lay low for the night."

The girl made a valiant effort to hide a yawn, and failed utterly. "What about Paris?"

"Hey, Paris has stood for a thousand years, it'll wait a few hours more. If we don't catch the _First Lady_, I'll find us another airship to steal, how about that?"

"That sounds good," she said faintly, rubbing at her eyes. She was fading fast; how had he not noticed? She'd been flung from the Tower same as him, and she'd not lagged or complained once the whole day. Booker sighed. How had he started to care this much about the welfare of a damn kid, and after knowing her for all of a single day? _Shit_.

"It's not likely there'll be an inn that'll want to put us up, even if they don't recognize us," he said aloud, trying to smother this disturbing revelation. "How d'you feel about adding breaking and entering to our list of transgressions against the good people of Columbia?"

"Hooray," Elizabeth said, but her exhaustion took the bite out of her sarcasm. "More crime."

"That's how I like to look at it." Booker smiled at her, and she rubbed her eyes again and returned his grin. "Come on, then. Miles to go before we sleep, and all that."

He offered her his arm, and she took it, leaning most of her weight on him. He knew it was more out of an effort to keep upright than anything else, but a part of him still felt rather flattered. By the time they made it to the entrance of Soldiers' Field, he was practically carrying her. Forget getting into the district, then; there were promenades and whitewashed verandas and shaded porches all along the edge of the island. One of them was bound to be unoccupied, so rather than heading into the island proper, he led Elizabeth up a broad flight of stairs, over the eagle's-head entrance to the fair, and through an archway into the striped awnings and marble columns of the resort town.

It did not take long to find a townhouse that was unoccupied; most of them appeared to be summer homes, rented out to the wealthy patrons of Columbia in the warmer months. He kept a lookout while Elizabeth fumbled with the lock, mildly miffed that the girl was a defter lockpick than him, and then they were inside. Booker led the way through the shadowy house, pistol at the ready, but they found no-one. The occupants had either gone away for the holiday or had not yet arrived, as the place was well-stocked, but unoccupied, and completely dark; it appeared to have no electrical lights, only lamps that he lit with the tips of his fingers.

Elizabeth stuck her tongue out at him. "Show-off."

"Hey, _you_ can open holes to Paris and fix broken bones," he said, shooting her a look.

"Barely," said Elizabeth, flopping down on the plush sitting-room sofa with a sigh. "They never stay open long enough for me to go through."

"Well, uh." Booker wasn't entirely sure how to console her. _'I'm sorry your impossible, slightly terrifying power doesn't work the way you want it to'_? "Practice makes perfect, right?"

"I guess." She sighed, blew a strand of hair out of her face. There was still dried blood smeared on her cheek. Booker found himself suddenly taken by the urge to reach out and wipe it away, and he hastily busied himself with checking all the cupboards and closets in the house for anything they might be able to use, desperate for a distraction. What the hell was this? Was there something wrong with him? Was he _insane_?

_She's half your age, asshole!_

And it didn't even matter. Booker slammed the door of the linen cupboard into which he'd been staring blankly for the past five minutes, prompting an alarmed cry from the other room.

"What's wrong, Mr. DeWitt? Did something happen?"

"No! —No," Booker called back, hurrying to return to the parlor. Elizabeth blinked up at him from the couch. It was clear she had fallen asleep again. "I found something you might like, though."

"Is it an airship to Paris?"

"Not quite," he said. "The place doesn't have electricity, but it does have running water and an icebox. Here," he added, tossing her an orange.

"A _bath_— thank God! I feel like I've been dipped in mud and left to dry."

"You sorta look it, too."

"Oh, thanks." Elizabeth stood, rubbing her back, and disappeared up the stairs. Moments later, there was a series of loud metallic groans and clanks, and then the sound of running water. It appeared that the girl was going to be occupied for some time, so Booker began his second round of the townhouse, a bottle of Biela 1846 he'd filched from the pantry in one hand, sticky fire in the other. He smeared the molten paste all along the windowsills and doorframes, where it glowed and smoldered but did not scorch the wood. Satisfied that any intruders or potential vacationers who came calling would be thus deterred, he returned once more to the upstairs of the house.

He was halfway up the stairs when a loud shatteringsound came from above. He froze only for a moment, and then sprinted the rest of the way to the landing and paused, cocking his pistol and listening. The washroom was still shut, and he could hear the sound of water, but no light came from the crack beneath the door. A cursory glance revealed she was not in the dressing-room or the house's only bedchamber, and there was no place else she could be.

"_Elizabeth_!"

No answer. Booker rapped sharply on the bathroom door: nothing. "Hey, Elizabeth, you all right in there?"

Still nothing. He knocked again, more insistently. What if she'd fallen asleep again? And what had been the cause of that crash? If she drowned— he wouldn't get paid if she was dead. Yeah, of course. Samuels would be livid, _that_ was it. "All right, last chance. I'm coming in, and I'd appreciate it if you weren't drowned."

The room was dark when he entered; the light from the hall glittered faintly on the broken glass of the lantern that had been knocked from beside the sink. Booker pushed the door open further to find Elizabeth sitting in the huge copper washtub, fully clothed and shivering as the water poured over her, holding her open palms in front of her and staring emptily into space. Her fingertips were red; it appeared she had discovered her bloodied face at last.

Booker quickly put away his pistol, fetched the lamp from the hall, and set it on the countertop before going over to sit gingerly upon the edge of the basin.

"Hey. You okay?"

She turned to face him, but her eyes were unfocused, fixing on a point just above his left shoulder. When she spoke, it was in barely more than a shaky whisper. "'Will all great Neptune's ocean not wash this blood clean from my hands?'"

Ah, _shit_. He should've expected this. "Maybe not, but they're not gonna turn the whole sea red neither." That got her to focus on him, a faint expression of surprise on her face. Booker smirked at her. "Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint."

Not quite a smile, but at least she didn't look quite so dead-eyed as a moment ago. It was a start. "You doin' okay?"

"It was in my _hair_," she said wretchedly, shuddering with revulsion. It was still better than that blank emptiness, though. Booker did his best to look kindly and sympathetic(6).

"You want some help?"

Elizabeth nodded. Forcing himself not to think too hard about what he was doing, Booker fetched a towel from the washstand and knelt to help her clean the blood and dirt from her face and hands. It _was_ in her hair, and caked under her fingernails and crusted across her forehead, but to his relief none of it turned out to be hers. Her only apparent injury was a large, pale bruise on her forearm where she'd been grabbed, but other than that she seemed more or less unharmed.

By the time he was done, the bathwater had turned a pale, filmy pink, and the towel was ruined, but Elizabeth had stopped shaking and looked a good deal more lively. She shooed him out shortly thereafter, reappearing in a nightdress which must have belonged to the lady of the house, as it was several inches too large for her and dragged upon the ground. She took care to lay her sodden clothes out to dry; then, without another word to Booker, she padded into the bedroom, flung herself face-first into the feather pillows, and had fallen asleep within seconds.

He looked at her for a moment, and decided it wasn't worth it. There was a large armchair in the bedchamber that looked comfortable enough. Booker dropped into it wearily, laid the shotgun across his knees, and resigned himself to a restless and troubled sleep.

* * *

1. You had too, hadn't you? Never fear; our presence is inescapable. Delaying it is merely delaying the inevitable.

2. I suppose we should all be thankful that Booker never truly had the chance to become a parent; I'm not sure which iteration of him would be the worst at raising a child(3).

3. Well, there is that universe with Anna and(4)—

4. No, _wait! _That's still a spoiler for five chapters, remember(5)?

5. Oh, yes. Thank you, brother; that would've been disastrous.

6. It was a valiant effort to be sure; still, I'm surprised the girl didn't burst out laughing(7).

7. Oh, let him be. Can't you see he's trying to have a Moment? And at least he's making an effort— I'd count that as a marked improvement.

* * *

_AN: It always bugs me that Elizabeth doesn't react to the Luteces in any way besides mild surprise, since Constance Field's voxophone at the raffle states, and I quote, that "only you [Rosalind] are allowed to visit the girl in the tower", which implies that Beth should recognize Rosalind at least. Unless that's just propaganda? Someone had to teach her to read, though, and somehow I doubt that it was the Prophet._

_I can't be the only one who picked the cage pendant on the boardwalk, right? ...Right? *Cricket Noises*_

_Also, I'd like to take a moment to apologize for my inability to fluff. Clearly I am terrible at it and I should be ashamed of myself. I'M NOT, THOUGH :B_

_And yes, that last scene is, in fact, blatantly stolen from ahem, lovingly inspired by one of my favorite films. If you caught it, congratulations, you have good taste; if not, the only hint I will give you is that your lack of exposure has left me shaken, but not stirred._

_Coming up next: **And Damned be He Who First Cries, 'Hold, Enough'!**, because we obviously haven't had enough Gratuitous Shakespeare in the story yet._


End file.
